Faith, Love and Family
by LizaLizBethy
Summary: At his graduation, Dylan realizes that he isn't as alone as he thinks he is... and he's finally ready to move forward with his life. Finale re-write.
1. Chapter 1

Summary: There was a reason Dylan didn't want anyone to go to his graduation ceremony… but he wasn't alone either.

A/N: This is just my own personal rewrite of the end of the series; I know this or something similar has been done a million times over, but I just watched season 10 for the first time, and I can't seem to get anything written for She Falls Apart until I get this off of my chest. Plus, fluff is nice.

**Part One**

"Dylan McKay."

He'd told David and Kelly that he wanted to be alone for this, that he wanted it to be private, and he had told the three women in the center of the fifth row the same thing. But as he crossed the stage and saw all three women leap to their feet, he was glad that they hadn't listened to him. Erica, Iris and Brenda were screaming his name and catcalling as he shook the Dean's hand and took his diploma, and Dylan couldn't help but think about what he had told Gina after Dr. Martin's funeral.

Faith, love and family… he'd said that he didn't have any of that, but looking at the women cheering for him, Dylan knew he had all three. Iris, Erica and Brenda were his family, no matter how hard he pushed them away.

For all her faults, Iris had come back into his life when he was sixteen, and she'd never gone away. No one else in the world would have trusted a sixteen year old recovering alcoholic to live on his own, but Iris had. In some books, that might make her a bad mother, but Dylan knew that what she'd done was right. Because she'd given him his space then, they were able to be close to each other today. She'd had faith in him, and she'd loved him, and, as his mother, she was definitely family.

Erica had come into his life when he'd thought Iris would be his only family for the rest of his life, and she had loved him as he had never been loved before. Erica loved him with the hero worship of a much younger sibling, and even though he had disappointed her in the worst way, even though he had left her to the custody of his mother and later to shuttle between his mother and his ex-girlfriend, she loved him still. She worshipped him still. She was the first person in his life whose love seemed truly unconditional, although he'd since learned that both Iris and Brenda had loved him in the same unconditional nature. Like Irish, she had faith in him, she loved him, and she was family.

Brenda was a different story.

Brenda was the whole story.

In the past decade, Brenda was the only person he'd been in constant contact with. She was the reason Iris was in his life; she'd encouraged him to let his mother be a part of his life, and encouraged his mother to believe he was worth the effort. She'd done the same with Erica, giving the troubled teenager a home even after he'd left London, even after he'd abandoned them both. She was the reason he held his degree in his hands now; she had talked him into going to California University six years ago, to the University of London three years ago, to California University again this year. She'd told him once that he would always be a part of the Walsh family, but nowadays, she was the only member of the Walsh family who still felt like family to him.

For ten years, she'd been his constant. Whether she was a friend, a lover, a girlfriend, an ex-girlfriend, she was family. Whether she felt anger, friendship, heartbreak, passion, desire, hurt, or pain over him, her love had been a constant. She had always believed not that he could be a better person, as Kelly believed, but that he already was a better person, hidden underneath his outer layers.

She had taught him what faith, love and family meant.

The ceremony ended and Dylan weaved his way through the crowd and wandered over to the three women who were his only family, or, the only family he was allowed to acknowledge. Erica found him first, launching herself into his arms. Dylan held her close as he marveled over how much she had grown. When they'd met, five years ago, she'd been a shy twelve year old hiding behind books and eager to impress him. Now, she was a woman of eighteen, a survivor of a terrible mother and step father, an abusive boyfriend who'd led her into a life of drug abuse and prostitution, and a brother who had never done quite enough to protect her. With the help of Brenda and his mother, and, he grudgingly acknowledged, Brandon and Kelly, Erica was now flourishing. She was in a healthier relationship with a nice young man. Iris and Brenda had pulled every string they could find to get her enrolled in high school in Hawaii, and she was a year away from her own graduation.

Iris wrapped her arms around him next, whispering how proud she was as she did so. His mother, too, had changed since she'd re-entered his life. Caring for him and for Erica had changed her dramatically, in ways Dylan sometimes regretted. She looked older than she was now, with lines around his eyes and hair that was going gray. She still dressed in flowing skirts and stylish jackets, still wore big, clunky jewelry, each piece of which she swore held some deeper meaning to spirit or soul. She still met with psychics and read the tea leaves of anyone who let her get close enough. But she could no longer be considered flakey. She had established routines that had to be upheld, for the health and mental health of himself and of his sister.

When he had hugged his mother and his sister, Dylan stood, smiling as he looked at Brenda. She was smiling back, though neither of them was sure whether or not to go in for a hug. If she had been anyone else, it would have been an awkward moment. If she were Kelly, it would be an awkward moment.

"Congratulations, Dylan" she said softly, and he decided for them both, pulling her close to him. She kissed his cheek and he kissed her lips in return.

"Marry me."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: I've decided that, unlike my other story, this is going to focus strictly on Brenda and Dylan, so it will alternate between their points of view. The other characters will only come in on the sidelines, as Brenda and Dylan interact with them and/or think about them.

**Part Two**

"Marry me."

Sure she'd heard him wrong, Brenda barely registered asking Dylan to repeat himself, but when he did, she heard the same two words at a slightly higher volume.

"Marry me."

All around them, students were hugging their families and friends, and out of the corner of her eye, Brenda saw another man proposing to another woman, both of them students. The woman was crying as the man slid the ring onto her finger. Brenda watched as they spun around in circles, kissing, and then looked back to Dylan. A long time ago, she had imagined they would be that couple, that they would get through high school, and then college and then they would get married and much farther down the line they might have a child or two, if she could afford to take a break from acting long enough to get pregnant.

She'd imagined it all, and the sixteen year old in her was screaming at her to say yes.

The rest of her was in shock.

"Dylan, I…"

"Don't answer yet," he whispered, holding her tightly. She cast a glance at his mother and sister, both seemingly oblivious to the life altering conversation that was going on just a few feet away. The noisy celebrations drowned everything out. "Please don't answer, just consider it."

"You've asked me before," Brenda whispered back. No need to get Iris or Erica's hopes up now. No need to get her own hopes up. "Then you took it back."

"I was wrong."

"Dylan," Iris's voice was a welcome interruption. "What do you say we go out to dinner as a family? Your choice of restaurant. Brenda's treat."

Brenda smiled softly; it was a running joke between her and each of the McKays that although she was supposed to be a starving artist, she was, in fact, almost as well off as any of them. She had found incredible success on stage; having Roy Randolph as a patron proved more lucrative than even she had imagined. More than that, she had invested well, mostly because investing meant she would have_ something_ to talk to her father about. And, of course, having appeared in three major Hollywood films hadn't hurt either. Only one had been released, but its success and her success on stage had certainly helped inflate her salary on the other two.

"That would be great," Dylan looked at the floor as he spoke, and Brenda knew he was about to turn down his mother's offer. "Except that I promised Kelly…"

Brenda shook her head as she stepped away from him. She wished she could muster surprise at the revelation that he had proposed to her on the same day he'd planned a date with Kelly… who was engaged to someone else. Apparently, his marriage to Toni hadn't solved the Brenda-Dylan-Kelly debate at all. Sometimes, she thought she would spend the rest of her life trapped in this cycle, switching between playing Friend and Girlfriend to Dylan for the rest of her life, and with Kelly always on the edges, alternating between the same two roles. The thought filled her with a heavy sadness.

"Kelly can come too," Erica suggested, looking hopefully at Dylan. "It would be nice to see her again."

Brenda almost snorted aloud at that, and again at Iris's enthusiastic nod. She knew Dylan's sister and mother well. Neither one of them ever looked forward to seeing Kelly Taylor. Even after Kelly had all but saved Erica's life, rescuing her from a Hell Erica still refused to talk about, the youngest McKay had only ever paid her backhanded compliments, although she now worshipped the ground Brandon walked on.

"I'm sure," Dylan rolled his eyes, obviously wise to the lie himself. "And I'd really like that, but…"

Everyone looked at Brenda, and she smiled sadly.

"Kelly wouldn't be happy to see me," she finished for him, reading the look on Dylan's face clearly. "Why don't you three go? I have a script to memorize anyway."

It was a lie, just as Iris and Erica had lied about wanting to see Kelly, but today was Dylan's day, they'd all agreed. It was his choice who to randomly propose to, and his choice who to go to dinner to.

"It's just that I told her no one was coming to the ceremony," Dylan was saying, looking at Brenda with a pleading, please-understand-why-I-seem-to-be-choosing-her look on his face, a look Brenda had received a hundred times, and seen him give to Kelly a hundred other times. "And she doesn't know we've been in contact at all, and… she wouldn't understand."

"It's fine."

It wasn't fine, as she told Andrea and Valerie later, on a three-way phone call from her hotel room as Dylan dined out with his mother, his sister, and his other on-again-off-again girlfriend. Who was engaged to someone else.

"He proposed again?!" Andrea had squealed, ever the hopeless romantic. Brenda had moved to New York two years ago, shortly after her brother hadn't married Kelly, and she and Andrea had grown close in a way they had never quite been in high school. Brenda was Hannah's favorite aunt, and she often found herself brokering peace talks between Andrea and Jesse, still going back and forth between separated and married and never signing divorce papers, no matter how many they had drawn up.

Brenda knew why Andrea wanted Brenda and Dylan to settle down together once and for all. If Brenda and Dylan could work it out, in spite of everything between them, the years, the failed engagement, the alcohol, the drugs, the Kelly, if they could get past all of that, maybe Andrea and Jesse stood a chance of working things out too.

Val disagreed.

"Run for the hills," had been her advice, "or, from the Hills, actually."

Buffalo hadn't suited Valerie, who found it was much easier to forgive her mother and move on with her life if she and Abby had some distance between them. Consequently, she'd moved to New York City, renting an apartment in the same building as Brenda's. Val had always known Brenda better than anyone, save maybe Dylan, ever since they were young children, meeting on a playground in the suburbs of Minneapolis. It had been easy to fall into their old roles, playing sisters and best friends and always protecting each other. Sometimes Brenda thought that if she and Val had never been separated the way they were for so many years, things might have turned out differently for them both.

Along the way, Andrea and Valerie had grown close too, and so they were a trio. Andrea was still living in Connecticut, but she drove into the city once a week for dinner and drinks with "the girls." Brenda privately thought that it was a very good thing Andrea and Valerie had become friends; Val loosened Andrea up, while Andrea showed Val how responsible adults behaved.

"I'm coming to keep you company," Val had announced suddenly, and no matter how much Brenda swore it wasn't necessary, her friend insisted. "The club can practically run itself, and you cannot be trusted out there for two months by yourself."

"I would love to come home," Andrea had chipped in. "Hannah's on spring vacation next week, and I know she'd love to see her grandparents. Jesse's been so stressed at the office, it would be good for us to get away."

Brenda took only a few seconds to wonder whether it would be good for Andrea and Hannah to get away from Jesse, or if it would be good for the whole family to get away from Connecticut. It was a few seconds too long, because somehow, when she refocused on the conversation, her friends were already buying tickets online and planning to meet at the airport.

Brenda shook her head when she hung up the phone, but she was smiling. There had been years when she had desperately needed female friends to talk to, especially about Dylan. Years when she had needed people who knew her history with Dylan, needed people who wouldn't automatically advise her to do what was best for Kelly, even if it wasn't what was best for herself, needed people who could give her genuine advice. Kelly had never, even for a second, filled that role, and Donna had been Kelly's best friend. She'd been essentially on her own ever since Valerie had moved to Buffalo and only more so since the Walsh family had moved to Beverly Hills.

It was good to have friends again.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~


	3. Chapter 3

**Part Three**

Dinner had been an unmitigated disaster. They ate at a fancy restaurant that he wouldn't have chosen except that he wanted to placate both Iris and Kelly; Iris because he knew that she was angry at him on Brenda's behalf – he was angry at himself on Brenda's behalf – and Kelly because he knew she was not happy to find out that he had 'invited' people to his graduation ceremony after all. Then, just after they'd ordered, Erica had made damn sure things wouldn't improve any over the course of the meal.

"I've been looking into transferring to West Beverly for my senior year," she'd mentioned, as if she wasn't dropping a major bombshell on Dylan and Iris, as if she wasn't about to accidentally-on-purpose drop another bombshell on Kelly. "You know, since you're here full time now, and since Brenda will be here at least for a few more months. It would be nice to be close to you guys again."

"Brenda's here?" Kelly had asked, her voice soft but hard, a tone that had Dylan spiraling back to the days when he'd been eighteen and in love with them both, and Kelly had resented him for it every second of every day that they were together.

Erica pretended to be oblivious, although Dylan knew she wasn't.

"Well yeah, she flew out for the graduation ceremony, and then she's filming a movie out here, and then I think she's appearing in a play in San Francisco," Erica had shrugged casually, taking a sip of water before continuing, "at least she's in talks about a play in San Francisco. Either way, she'll probably be in town for awhile after the movie wraps because her other movies are coming out this fall and then there's all the press stuff and premiers and of course she'll probably be around for awards season this winter. Of course, she'll have to go back to New York for the Tony's next month. She's nominated, you know."

Iris and Dylan were both frowning matching frowns at Erica, both wondering where the little girl who'd come into their lives so long ago had disappeared to. This Erica was harsher and more manipulative. Watching her talk to Kelly was like watching Valerie Malone at her most scheming. And Kelly was proving easy to manipulate, looking down at the table, not even trying to maintain appearances. Later, when he drove her home, Kelly barely spoke to him until they reached her apartment.

"I almost threw away my marriage for you," she said quietly as he walked her to the door. "I really thought you'd changed. I really thought you were capable of changing."

"Kelly…"

"You've been lying to me for two years, haven't you?" she demanded, turning to face him with her arms crossed against her chest. Dylan just shook his head and turned to look out at the ocean. "Haven't you, Dylan?"

"I never said I wasn't in contact with her."

"No, but you did say that you broke up almost four years ago, when, according to Erica, you were still together and actually engaged two years ago," Kelly snapped angrily. Dylan winced. He hadn't realized his sister 'let' that detail slip. "You said that you were at my wedding, and I believed you like an idiot, even though I knew that Brandon talked to you, in England, that morning!"

Dylan didn't have anything to say to that that wouldn't make things even worse between them. Or at least, he assumed that telling her he'd used Brandon's description of Kelly on her wedding day to convince her that he had actually been there probably wouldn't go over very well.

"I cannot believe you actually wanted me to leave Matt so that I could be your backup plan!" Kelly hissed, before stalking inside and slamming the door.

Knowing better than to try to talk to her when she was like this, Dylan decided it would be best to just give up on improving his night at all. He climbed back into his car and started to head back to the Royale, but somehow found himself outside the Omni Hotel, where Brenda was staying. He knew because she, Iris and Erica were sharing the Presidential Suite, and he'd dropped Iris and Erica off before driving Kelly home.

Although he was certain that going in and trying to talk to Brenda would be a bad idea, he found himself handing his keys over to a valet and rushing to catch an elevator.

"Dylan," his mother said when she opened the door. Her eyebrows were raised in surprise. "Did you forget something?"

"No, I was just… I hoped Brenda might…"

"I see," Iris forced a smile that looked worried to him. He wasn't sure if it was for his own sake or for Brenda's. Probably somewhere between the two. "Erica and I will just be in our room, if you need us."

Iris pulled Erica forcibly from the room, leaving Dylan alone with Brenda, who sat stiff as a board at the dining table, leaning over a script and pretending to read it.

"I thought you said you needed to memorize a script."

"I do."

"Come on Bren," he shook his head, pulling the script away from her. "Macbeth? You've had this memorized for years."

"Don't say the name," Brenda hissed. "And this script has the director's notes…"

"For a play you still haven't officially signed on to do, that wouldn't even start rehearsals until September anyway."

"Maybe I just didn't want to have dinner with you," Brenda sulked, crossing her arms over her chest. Somehow, the gesture that only aggravated him on Kelly seemed adorable on Brenda.

"I'm sorry," he sighed, sitting in a chair next to her and reaching out for her hand. Brenda didn't pull away, but she didn't encourage him either. "I know I haven't been clear today…"

"Haven't been clear," Brenda snorted. "You proposed to me and then shooed me away so that I wouldn't make Kelly uncomfortable."

"If it helps, I was miserable all through dinner."

"I don't want you to be miserable," Brenda shook her head, getting up from the table to pace the room, her arms wrapped around her own stomach. She was avoiding his eyes, but she didn't sound angry so much as hurt and confused. "I just want you to be sure, Dylan. For once, I want you to be sure of what you want."

"I am sure."

"How the Hell am I supposed to believe that?"

There was no possible answer to that question; he'd never been the most consistent person before, and he certainly hadn't seemed consistent today. So instead he asked her how he could make her believe him.

Brenda didn't answer.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~


	4. Chapter 4

**Part Four**

Her first week back passed quickly, after that first night, which seemed interminable. She went house hunting, leased a car, re-learned how to drive in LA (because, she had learned, each city has a different traffic personality, and it could prove disastrous to pretend that LA drivers were no different from New York drivers and that New York drivers were no different from London drivers). She visited the Peach Pit, and the Peach Pit After Dark and Now Wear This, and she stopped in at Kelly's office and got wrapped up in the obligations of friendship (though it didn't quite feel like friendship, and hadn't in years), including evenings out, and constantly updating everyone on Brandon's whereabouts and the things he was covering and doing and the name of his latest girlfriend (not that she believed for a second that _he'd _ever updated them about _her_ life – unless the update involved Dylan).

She and Iris spent no less than five hours trying to convince Erica and Dylan that Erica moving to California was the antithesis of a good idea; no matter how much the siblings missed each other, there was a powerful and dangerous man in jail because of Erica, and he had more than a few friends in Los Angeles. Dylan had suggested a bodyguard, but there was only so much a person could do. The truth was, Erica would find a way to escape the bodyguard, even if she swore that wasn't true now, and they were all safer and better off if Erica was with Iris, secluded in Hawaii.

Unfortunately, neither McKay sibling was especially good at hearing that they couldn't have what they wanted. And refusing either of them anything broke Brenda's heart; she suspected that it broke Iris's heart as well.

Outside of 'family time,' when Erica insisted that she join Iris, Erica and Dylan in whatever they were doing, Brenda hadn't seen much of Dylan.

The truth was, she'd avoided being alone with him.

Instead, she focused on setting up a life for herself in Los Angeles, albeit a disposable one that she could give up at the first sign of trouble. Her life had never been more portable, with the possible exception of her freshman year at CU.

Anyway, the week had flown by, and soon enough, Iris and Erica were boarding a plane back to Honolulu, and Brenda had to admit that she was relieved to see them go. Not too relieved though, because their departure left Brenda and Dylan standing alone together in the airport, with Brenda internally debating whether to offer Dylan a ride home or to leave him to the mercy of the cab stand.

Then she saw the look on his face, the wounded-puppy-my-mother-and-sister-just-left-me-again-like-everybody-leaves-me look, and she found herself listening to him accept the ride she hadn't realized she'd offered aloud.

"I have to wait for Val and Andrea," Brenda explained, "but their plane is supposed to get here in half an hour, so it shouldn't be long."

"I can wait."

He gave her that Dylan look that said more than his words did, the look that said far too much all at once and left her reeling for days. He followed it up with is stupid, sexy half smile, which also left her reeling but in a totally different, wanna-rip-his-clothes-off way.

Stupid Dylan.

Brenda smiled uncomfortably and turned away, going to check the arrival time for the flight from New York. Of course, the plane was running almost an hour behind schedule, and of course, when she told Dylan this, he volunteered to wait and "keep her company." They ended up eating dinner at the nicest diner in the airport, which wasn't all that nice, but it was food and it was a way to pass the time. It was actually nice, spending time with him. He never once mentioned marriage or proposals or anything related to the question on both of their minds. He was the guy he'd always been, the guy she'd fallen for a thousand times over.

If only she could be certain that he wouldn't revert to the guy who broke her heart a thousand times over.

After dinner (no dessert, because Brenda was beginning filming in two weeks, no drinks because she was driving and Dylan had gotten the hint from her scathing glare when he'd ordered a beer at lunch a few days ago), they'd browsed one of the souvenir gift shops for gifts they could send to friends in other cities. It inevitably led to discussing mutual friends in London and laughing about "old times" they'd shared. When it was finally time to meet their friends at the gate, Brenda could hardly remember feeling uncomfortable about being alone with Dylan.

It wasn't hard to spot Val or Andrea. Val was one of the few women in the world who could step off a plane looking dead sexy, especially in a tight-fitting, low-cut scoop neck top and the perfect jeans. Every guy in the airport was looking at her, including Dylan and Jesse. Andrea, on the other hand, was easy to spot because she was standing next to Val, looking very much the frazzled Mom who'd spent hours on a plane with a bored five year old and a husband with a wandering eye. A wandering eye that kept finding its way to Valerie.

Brenda had never been Jesse's biggest fan.

"You didn't mention that Andrea was bringing the family," Dylan said into Brenda's ear as they waived the group over. "Will we all fit in your car?"

"I think Jesse got a rental," Brenda answered. Both Valerie and Andrea were shooting Brenda curious looks, and Brenda realized she hadn't noticed how close she and Dylan were standing.

There were hugs all around, and then the Zuckerman-Vasquez family went to retrieve their rental car, promising to call later, when they were settled at Jesse's parents' house, and finally, Brenda, Dylan and Valerie were left to make their way to Brenda's car. Dylan mentioned something about how he'd thought Andrea and Jesse were divorced, prompting explanations from Brenda and Valerie that basically amounted to "Andrea hasn't quite figured out that she deserves better."

It was an incredibly awkward drive, and Brenda was grateful to arrive at the Royale and see Dylan leave. She and Val had a lot to discuss.

For example, as they pulled away from Dylan's hotel, Valerie whispered "he's marrying her?" and she sounded so broken that Brenda winced.

"I was hoping you wouldn't have gotten the invitation yet," Brenda sighed. "I should have told you that they were seeing each other again, but I didn't know how to say it…"

"_David Silver_ is marrying _Donna Martin_."

Brenda pulled up to the Omni's valet and the conversation ended, but Brenda knew it was a temporary pause only. When they reached the suite (Brenda had offered Val the room Iris and Erica had only just vacated), Val leaned back against the door, and Brenda could see her blink back tears. Brenda found herself wanting very much to kick David, hard enough to prevent him from enjoying his wedding night – or any night, for the rest of his life.

Val had never really gotten over David, or Noah for that matter, but especially not David, and Brenda knew that Val thought Donna had taken them both away from her. Personally, Brenda couldn't fault Noah for ending things with Val, but David… Brenda pretty much thought David was scum. It had been bad enough when he'd cheated on, lied to and stolen from Donna, but the way he'd hurt Val was, in Brenda's book, unforgivable. After everything Val had been through, David had left her just when she'd needed him most. When she was finally starting to heal, with his help, David had given up on her, and walked away. He'd made her feel guilty over things that had never been her fault, and over the fact that she wasn't over those things yet.

And if a part of Brenda wondered if she had done the same thing to Dylan, wondered if she was doing it right now, well, Brenda didn't like to dwell on it.

"Okay, I'm going to call room service and order enough ice cream for fifteen people," she announced, shaking her head to clear her Dylan-related thoughts. This was about Valerie, and Valerie's broken heart, not Brenda's. "To Hell with the movie star diet."

"How about enough tequila for fifteen people?" Valerie suggested instead. "Enough tequila for fifty people?"

"Valerie, I have enough alcoholics in my life," Brenda teased, setting the phone down and crossing over to the room's wet bar. In spite of her words, she pulled out a bottle and two shot glasses. "But, just this once…"

Five, or maybe six, shots later, Brenda and Val were no closer to a solution to their problems than they'd been when they'd started pouring, although they'd talked and talked and cried and talked all through the night. Brenda went to bed as conflicted as ever, the only difference was that the world was spinning a little more.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: This next series of parts might individually seem pretty short, but that's because I'm only switching POVs as I switch parts, and I want to up the tempo a little and switch between Brenda and Dylan a little more often. On the plus side, this means I'll be writing more parts in one sitting, and that means I'll be posting more often.

**Part Five**

"You can't keep doing this to her."

Valerie and Andrea plowed their way into his hotel room the second he opened the door, leaving Dylan blinking and confused in their wake. He muttered something sarcastic about inviting them in before closing the door behind them. Both women had already seated themselves on the couch before the door was even shut.

"It's not fair, Dylan," Andrea's voice wasn't as harsh as Valerie's had been, but it was clear that she didn't entirely approve of whatever it was that he wasn't supposed to keep doing to whoever it was – which probably had a lot to do with his proposing to Brenda, he acknowledged. "You can't keep offering her this big commitment and then not following through."

Dylan didn't say anything; instead, he seated himself across from them in an armchair and prepared to listen to what they had to say. Andrea and Valerie were Brenda's best friends in the world, and he knew that if they were against him, Dylan didn't stand a chance at convincing Brenda that he was serious, that he wanted to marry her, to spend his life with her.

"What happened in London?" Valerie asked, surprising him. He was certain that Brenda would have told her friends, in great detail, about their most recent breakup. He told Val as much. "Your side of the story."

So he told them. He'd been unhappy in London, and he hadn't known how to tell her that. Instead, he'd insisted that she choose between London without him and Los Angeles with him. He hadn't understood at the time that he'd been asking her to choose between being a stage actress and trying to break into television and movies, or that other than filming an occasional movie, she wasn't interested in that lifestyle. He also hadn't understood that he hadn't been unhappy because of London, he'd just been unhappy. So he gave her an ultimatum, and when she'd asked for a compromise, or at least for time to think about it, he'd left, without letting her answer at all.

"It was stupid," he admitted, "I was stupid."

But he was also still reeling from having lost Toni, and feeling guilty over how quickly he'd moved on, and even more guilty over the idea of marrying again, let alone marrying an ex-girlfriend, a woman he had been in love with even as he'd been in love with Toni. Because there was a part of him that, when Toni came down the aisle toward him, thought of Brenda. And Dylan couldn't bear the thought that Toni may have lost her life only to become a footnote in his and Brenda's love story.

On top of all of that, there was his history. Dylan had reconciled with his father and then watched his father 'die.' He'd gotten close to his sister and she'd been taken from him (along with a good chunk of his money). He'd reconciled with Brenda and she'd left for another continent, and seemingly never to return. He'd found Toni, and she'd died. As much as he'd wanted to move forward with his life, to move forward with Brenda, he'd been terrified that any step forward would end with them separating, or worse, with her death.

Andrea was sympathetic to his explanation, but Val still seemed skeptical, which only made sense because Val had first had knowledge of the way he'd treated women in the past, and because Val had known Brenda much, much longer than she'd known Dylan, while Andrea had gotten to know them both around the same time. And Dylan got the sense that Valerie was used to seeing the worst in people, and being proven correct.

"Do you know how we met, Dylan?" Val asked him, and he knew that Brenda had told him something about a playground once, but he couldn't remember any details. It was clear that Val wanted to tell him the story anyway. "There was this outdoor skating rink near both of our houses back in Minnesota, and when we were all about four or five years old, Brenda and Brandon used to have skating lessons every Saturday morning. Jim would take them both, and he and Brandon would play on the playground or go get ice cream or something while Brenda had her figure skating classes first, but then when Brandon was at hockey practice, Jim always wanted to watch and he made Brenda stand there and watch with him. But one day she snuck away from him and came over to the playground, where I was playing while my babysitter made out with her boyfriend of the week on one of the benches.

"I watched Brenda climb all the way up the jungle gym, and then, right as Brandon was scoring a goal, she fell backwards all the way to the ground. Jim was totally distracted, didn't even know she was on the jungle gym in the first place," Val shook her head in apparent disapproval of Jim Walsh's parenting techniques. Dylan agreed, although he didn't say as much out loud. "Brenda damn near broke her back and no one saw it but me. And that's the way it's always been. She only falls like that when no one's looking."

There was a silence as Dylan tried to figure out what lesson he was supposed to take away from the story – because it was clear Valerie intended him to take something away from it. Finally, she came out and told him.

"You make her fall, and I hate it."

"I don't want to make her fall this time," he promised. Then he got up and went over to his desk, pulling the small velvet box out of one of the drawers and showing it to them. Valerie got the significance right away.

"That's… that's…" she stammered, gaping at the small ring inside. "That's _the_ ring!"

The only way Dylan knew he could convince Valerie that he wasn't out to hurt Brenda was to tell her the truth, so he explained everything to them. He explained that when Kelly had 'proposed' to him (if her all-or-nothing demand had actually been a proposal), he'd realized that he could never do that, for the same reason he couldn't let Brenda marry Stuart Carson years ago. Marrying Kelly would have meant that he and Brenda would never have a second – okay, fifth – chance, and he'd still believed that he would, one day, spend the rest of his life with Brenda. And so, in that moment, he'd hatched a plan to get her back. Andrea was practically swooning with the romance and even Valerie acknowledged that he might not be the world's biggest jackass.

"You're actually serious."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~


	6. Chapter 6

**Part Six**

"Morning sleepy head."

Brenda opened her eyes to find Val's face dangerously close to her own, although that wasn't the first thing she noticed. The first thing she noticed was the gymnasts somersaulting around in her stomach. Val held up a takeout bag from the Peach Pit and waived it in her face.

"I brought breakfast."

"No food," Brenda grumbled, lifting a pillow to cover head and hopefully block out the scent, which was simultaneously enticing and nauseating. "How are you even functioning right now."

"My tolerance for alcohol is astonishing, really," Val nudged Brenda until she finally gave in and sat up. "And yours is nonexistent. I've been up for hours. I went for a run. I took a shower. I borrowed your car, picked up Andrea, went to the Peach Pit, went to see Dylan…"

"You stole my car?" Brenda's brow furrowed before the rest of Val's list registered. "You stole my car so you could go see Dylan?!"

"I also brought you breakfast, which you should eat," Val hopped off the bed. "Andrea and I will be waiting in the living room. We need to talk."

Brenda threw a pillow at her oldest friend as Val retreated from the room. She missed her friend by several feet. Still, she had every intention of eating and dressing as slowly as possible, because she knew Valerie hated waiting. The only problem with her plan was that she was dying to know why Andrea and Val would feel the need to go see Dylan, and what they'd said to him. That was probably the reason Val had confessed to the visit in the first place; she must have known that curiosity would motivate Brenda to get out of bed as quickly as possible, hangover be damned.

It worked. Brenda was fed, dressed and joining her friends in under 15 minutes, and she had to admit that breakfast actually had helped to settle her stomach. She found herself wondering how she had ever lived without Nat and the Peach Pit.

In the living room, Andrea held out a mug of back coffee, and Brenda grimaced as she drank it, grimacing again as she saw the smirk on her friend's face. Both Andrea and Val were used to Brenda's hangovers, not because Brenda drank much of often, but because she got one whenever she drank anything even remotely alcoholic. Two drinks and she was guaranteed to feel it the next morning, unless, for some reason, she was drinking whiskey, which amused Val to no end.

But Val wasn't in the mood to tease Brenda this morning.

"He had your grandmother's ring."

Valerie's words shook Brenda more than she was willing to let on, even to the two people closest to her. Instead of allowing herself to react, Brenda asked whether it was Grandma Walsh's, or Nana Marren's. It was a stupid question, and the incredulous expression on Val's face told Brenda that her friend didn't believe for a second that Brenda didn't already know the answer.

There was, after all, a huge difference between the two rings.

Nana Marren, her mother's mother, had a perfectly nice ring; it was a little on the small side, but Grandma Walsh's wasn't all that much nicer. The ring had stayed on Nana Marren's finger all through her marriage to Grampa Marren, which had been rocky, especially after Sheila died, but they were happy enough. They'd had three children, Cindy, Sheila, and Bobby's father, Bobby Marren Senior, and three grandchildren, Brenda, Brandon and Bobby. The ring, as far as Brenda knew, was still on her Nana's finger, and it would be fairly easy to get a hold of. One phone call, with a simple enough "hello, Mrs. Marren, I'd like to marry your granddaughter and could I please offer her your ring?" and the ring would be off her finger and in the mail before the phone call was over.

Grandma Walsh's ring on the other hand…

Generations ago, a young farmer had sold all of his land (which had never been very much land to begin with) to buy an engagement ring for the girl whose father owned the farm next door. The farmer and the girl were very much in love and had been for years, but her father wouldn't allow the match, because not only was the boy broke, but he'd been stupid enough to spend what little he had on a ring for a girl when he didn't even have her father's permission yet. Broken hearted, the farmer left town to start over, and years passed. Eventually, the farmer had quintupled his original wealth, without ever selling the ring, and he decided to go back and see if the girl was still single. She was, and she loved him still, in spite of the time that they'd spent apart. Her father had no reason to prohibit the marriage this time, and so the farmer finally got his girl.

The ring had been passed down from one generation to the next from then on, changing names several times, before it had ended up on the index finger of Brenda and Brandon's grandmother, two days before their grandfather was called away to fight in World War II. For years, Grandma and Grandpa Walsh had only had sporadic letters for contact, but neither of them ever fell out of love. He returned, and they'd married, and the rest was Walsh family history.

When she'd died, Grandma Walsh had left the ring to their oldest son, Jim, to give to whichever of the grandchildren – Brenda, Brandon or their three Walsh cousins – he saw fit.

In order to get the ring, Dylan would have to have convinced Jim to give his blessing to the engagement, but the ring meant a lot more than Jim's blessing. It meant getting her father to support the idea of Brenda and Dylan as husband as wife. It meant Jim believed that their history was in keeping with the ring's history, of love that had remained undaunted by time, distance, war, and parental disapproval.

And on top of all of that, it meant that Jim thought that _she_, Brenda, was more deserving of the ring than any of her cousins and more deserving of it than Brandon (or, more likely, that Jim figured Brandon was such an expert at buying engagement rings at this point, that he didn't need to be given one).

There was no way Dylan had orchestrated all of this in the week since he'd proposed, and there was no way he'd even try to get the ring if he wasn't serious about wanting to marry her. He knew how much Grandma Walsh's ring meant to her, had known since their last, ill-fated engagement, when she hadn't been able to convince her father to give it to her. He also knew that wearing that ring might actually be more binding than the actual marriage contract, in Brenda's eyes, because a failed engagement, or worse, a failed marriage would ruin the ring's magic.

Tears were streaming down her face as the full weight of Dylan's proposal hit her, and Brenda found herself running out of the hotel suite without a word to Val or Andrea.

She needed to find Dylan.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~


	7. Chapter 7

A/N: Even I couldn't just leave it there for too long.

**Part Seven**

The After Dark was filled with flowers, candles, streamers, ribbons and any other kind of decoration that anyone had imagined could be applicable for an engagement party. A banner reading "Congratulations Donna and David" ran over the bar, and Dylan caught Noah giving it more than one dirty look as he tended bar. The happy couple themselves were seated at a table in the middle of the stage, smiling out as their friends danced and laughed and partied in their honor. The club was crowded, but not so crowded that he couldn't see her, leaning against the bar in a red dress that he hadn't seen before, her hair flowing in loose curls down her back. Brenda had never looked so beautiful, but then, he thought that at least once a week.

She was watching the door, waiting for him, and he smiled as she gave him a little wave. He'd found identical notes in both his office upstairs and his hotel suite, and Nat had mentioned that she'd been by the Pit looking for him. There'd even been a message at the community center for him.

"_Dylan, we really need to talk. I'll be at Donna and David's Engagement Party tonight; meet me there at 8? Please? Love, Brenda."_

Love.

Love had to mean something good, didn't it?

"I've been looking for you all day," she told him when they were (finally) standing face to face. There was a small smile gracing her lips and she was looking up at him with an expression he could only consider to be a look of wonder.

"I gathered."

Somehow, they had fallen into step, and they were dancing to one of the traditional, sappy, overly emotional love songs that typically played at engagement parties. He barely heard the song, but the tempo was right and his arms had just found their way around her waist. He sensed more than saw the confused stares of their friends, but Dylan didn't much care what they were thinking, as long as Brenda was thinking what he thought that she was thinking.

"Where were you?"

"Around," Dylan bit back a wince and settled for a teasing smile. "After I was abruptly awakened by your friends this morning…"

"Sorry about them."

"… I went surfing, and then I went to the Pit, and then I came here, and then – and please don't hate me for this – I went to see Kelly," he said it all in one breath, in a hurry to come clean, but reluctant to have the Kelly Discussion now, when he was so sure that Brenda had been about to say yes.

"Oh?"

For the first time in damn near a decade, he couldn't read her face at all. It was studiously blank, the way it was right before she went on stage and right before cameras began to role. Except that she wasn't preparing for a part now.

"I had to be honest with her," he explained, mentally begging her to understand, certain his face probably betrayed that plea. "I haven't been in awhile. Honest, that is. I had to explain."

"She told me."

"She did?"

"She said you were her soul mate," Brenda hadn't stormed off or hit him yet, which he had to take as a positive sign. "But she also said that that didn't mean that you were in love."

That was exactly what he and Kelly had both concluded; that their lives had run parallel, from their white collar criminal fathers and neglectful and sometimes spacey mothers, to their "bad" reputations, to the addictions they'd both battled (her more successfully than he had), to the twins they'd both loved, lost and loved again. At seventeen, they'd both mistaken that sometimes creepy connection for something more romantic in nature. From there on, they'd both been damned.

"She also said she meant it when she chose my brother."

"Ouch," this time, instead of repressing a wince, he faked one, raising a hand to his heart. "That stings."

"And that you didn't mean it when you chose her," Brenda smiled. The song ended and another started, but the two of them hardly registered the change.

"I didn't."

There was a quiet pause as they continued to sway, adjusting their rhythm to the new song that seemed very similar to the old song. Brenda's face was readable once more, and in her eyes, Dylan could see all the dreams they'd found and lost together coming alive once more. He murmured her name, and they both knew it was a question.

It was _the_ question.

"We should talk," she answered, pulling him toward the office he shared with Noah (okay, the office he had commandeered from Noah).

And they did talk.

While their friends celebrated Donna and David's loved, Brenda and Dylan discussed and rekindled their own. They both admitted to having felt, at one point or another, as if they'd lost themselves inside of their relationship; that was the reason Dylan had insisted Brenda choose between London and her career and himself and his selfish need to be in Los Angeles, a need he didn't understand now. It was also the reason Brenda had refused to consider such a move. They discussed each of their families and the problems that came with the Walsh and McKay clans. They discussed Kelly and Gina and Dean (Brenda's ex-boyfriend, the only one who'd ever really come close to competing with Dylan for her heart) and Stuart and Toni, and all of the various feelings that were tied to each of those other people in their lives.

They discussed their lives.

They compromised on location, agreeing to be wherever Brenda could find work, but also agreeing that when Brenda wasn't working, they would be in Los Angeles. They agreed on children – not for a long, long time, if ever and, oh by the way, twins ran in Brenda's family. They discussed pets and holidays and bank accounts and pre-nups (they both said no, because, quite honestly, if it was easy for them to walk away from each other, there was a real chance they would, and neither of them wanted that) and various other legal documents that needed to be considered.

And then, finally, Brenda gave him her answer.

"It has to be after the Tony's," she told him. "Because Donna has to design the dress and she's already designing the Tony dress and she has her own wedding to plan…"

"Brenda, I will wait another ten years if you need me to."

"Ask me again," she ordered, leaning forward to kiss him slowly. "Ask me for real this time."

Just a few months ago, he'd told Steve that it didn't count unless you got down on one knee. He'd never got down on one knee before, despite having proposed twice to her, and once to Toni, but he did now, pulling the ring out of his pocket – he'd had a hunch about tonight.

"Brenda Walsh," he whispered, staring up into her eyes to memorize the moment. Her eyes never left his, although their depths were cloudy with tears. A few spilled over and landed on his face, but he didn't mind. "Will you please marry me?'

He held out the ring, her family ring, and Brenda gasped out loud.

"Val said, but I didn't… you must have… Dylan, how…?"

"Uh Bren," he interrupted, though not unkindly, "an answer would be good."

"Oh," she laughed and pulled him to his feet. "It's yes. Of course it's yes."

Dylan lifted Brenda off the ground in a sweeping kiss, her arms twining around his neck, gripping him tightly as they spun in circles, lips locked. When they finally pulled apart for air, their foreheads pressed together, and Dylan heard Brenda whispering so softly he could barely hear her.

"It was always yes."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~


	8. Chapter 8

A/N: Bask in the fluff for this part, because I'm sorry to say the angst returns soon. On the plus side, the fact that this story has taken on a life of its own means that it will be a lot longer than originally planned.

**Part Eight**

"This is your room?" Brenda looked from the door to her fiancé and back again. "This room is your room. You're sure?"

Dylan fitted his key card in the door's lock and twisted its handle.

"It seems to be," he nodded, taking a step back to let her pass. "Is that a problem?"

"Why is the honeymoon suite you room?" her eyes widened as she entered and saw rose petals scattered in a path from the door to the bed, which was facing huge windows looking out on a breath taking view of the city. A room service cart stood at the end of the bed, offering chocolates, strawberries, and a bottle of what appeared to be champagne on ice. The bed itself was a king size, covered in luxury sheets and more pillows than any couple could need. "This is what you needed to talk to Hector about, isn't it?"

After privately deciding to keep their engagement a secret for awhile, at least until they told their families, they'd returned to Donna and David's engagement party. Their friends had certainly noticed their absence, and more than once, Brenda heard someone or other making a crack about the Spring Fling sophomore year, when they'd also disappeared for most of the evening, though for different reasons.

No one had seemed quite comfortable with the idea of Brenda and Dylan being back together, at least not yet, and Brenda was a bit relieved that they had chosen not to tell anyone about the engagement (the ring was tucked away in her purse, safe and sound). Steve and David seemed perplexed by the situation, while Donna seemed to want to be happy for them, but the nervous glances she'd thrown Kelly more than once suggested that she wasn't quite sure she was supposed to be happy.

Kelly herself had been… well... everything Brenda had told Dylan was true; Kelly had told her that she and Dylan were soul mates but that they weren't in love. She had said that she meant it when she chose Brandon. And, okay, the part about Dylan meaning it when he chose her had been from a conversation three years earlier, over the phone, when Kelly was still with Brandon, but it wasn't exactly a lie to tell Dylan she'd said it.

But the truth was, Kelly's voice had belied the truth of her words. Brenda got the feeling Kelly was much farther from "over" Dylan than she'd let on, and she'd certainly made that clear at Donna and David's party. She'd been all over Matt, even though it was clear from his reaction that they were actually fighting. She'd flirted with Dylan right in front of both Matt and Brenda, and when the time came for toasting the happy couple, she'd only reminisced with stories that about Kelly and Dylan's relationship in addition to being about Donna and David's.

It was nothing overt, but it was enough to make everyone who knew her know that she was Not Okay (with capital letters) with Brenda and Dylan's reconciliation. As Val had left the party (early, because Valerie was Not Okay with Donna and David's reconciliation herself), she'd whispered to Brenda that her feud with Kelly was "so back on."

Brenda and Dylan had left not too long after Valerie, and when they'd arrived at Dylan's hotel, he had ushered her into a lounge and rushed off to find the hotel manager. She should have known something was up, but she'd spotted a payphone and between calculating the time difference between LA and Grozny, Chechnya, where her brother was currently stationed covering the war, and then digging through her purse for the napkin where she'd written his phone number down, Brenda had been too distracted to really wonder what Dylan was up to.

Of course, her brother hadn't picked up, not that he was ever at his apartment anyway. Brenda left him a message begging him to call her back as soon as possible, and then called her parents in Hong Kong. It was late tomorrow morning there, so she'd left _them_ a message, saying she'd call again in tomorrow morning her time, which meant late that night their time, so could they please wait up awhile?

Time distances made her head hurt, and not for the first time, she wished that at least one other branch of her immediate family was at least in a time zone a little closer to her own. Of course, that would mean she'd have to settle down in one time zone herself.

Anyway, she'd left her messages, and then Dylan was back, leading her away to the room where they now stood. He had a nervous look on her face as he watched her take everything in, and Brenda chalked it up as yet another similarity between that night and the night of the Spring Fling, their first night together.

It seemed impossible to her that that night had been more than nine years ago.

"Do you know why I'm so lucky?" she asked, smiling as she turned back to face him. He smiled back, and she could tell he'd caught the reference.

"Why?"

"How many girls get the wedding night before they get the wedding?" she answered with a teasing smile. Then her face morphed into a grimace as she heard her own words. "Okay, so a lot of girls," she conceded. "But I'm still luckier than all of them."

Dylan reached out a hand to pull her to him, kissing her deeply. Then he lifted her off the ground, throwing her over his shoulder as he had so long ago. Brenda laughed as he tossed her onto the mattress, then reached up to pull him down to her. She pulled his shirt off as they kissed once more.

"The ice is probably melting," Dylan murmured against her skin an hour or so later, as they lay wrapped around each other. Brenda hummed in response. "Hey, I paid good money for that sparkling cider."

"Sparkling cider?"

"My fiancé doesn't approve of me drinking," he explained with a smile. He then climbed out of bed to bring the food cart closer to them. Brenda smiled again, partly from hearing the word fiancé and partly because Dylan was pouring their drinks and preparing a desert plate for them, all without a stitch on.

He was a lot of things, but shy was not one of them.

"Fiancé, huh?" she played along. "Stud like you? She must be something to get you to settle down."

They both recognized the words at once, and Brenda wanted to bite her own tongue off. She hadn't meant to reference the telegram she'd sent him when he'd married Antonia. She hadn't wanted to invoke that particular ghost tonight, knowing how hard it would be for him. Dylan flinched, but then the teasing smile was back, and he climbed back into the bed, handing Brenda one of the flutes of cider and then pulling her into his arms again.

"Oh yeah. Beautiful, smart, and incredibly forgiving. Of course she can be a little demanding…"

"Hey!" she elbowed him gently. "She can't be too high maintenance if _you're _marrying her."

"She's just," he paused, pretending to think about it, "the right kind of high maintenance."

"Oh, the right _kind _of high maintenance."

"What about you?" Dylan continued their game. "Are you seeing anyone special?"

"Well, my fiancé is…."

How to tease him without hurting him? She decided against teasing him at all.

"My fiancé is a wonderful man." She kissed him sweetly, and then lunged for the desert plate. It had been months since she'd indulged in too many calories, but Brenda figured tonight was worth it.

They spent the next few hours talking and flirting and indulging in ways that had nothing to do with food, with a few naps in between. The sun rose without either of them noticing it. When the clock read 9 o'clock, Brenda knew she had to call her parents or they'd give up on her and go to bed, so with a sigh, she slid out of bed and grabbed one of the hotel robes (because she couldn't talk to her Dad while lounging naked in bed with Dylan McKay, even if they were getting married). Robe belted, she moved over to the desk and sat down at the phone. Her mother picked up, and Brenda asked to be put on speaker phone.

"Okay, Brenda, we can both hear you," her father announced. Brenda looked down at the ring that she was wearing once more. She swallowed nervously. "What did you want to talk about?"

"I think you already know what I want to talk about," she answered, toying with the ring. "Dylan proposed. And I said yes."

"Brenda that's great," her mother sounded wary more than happy, but she did sound somewhat pleased, which was a start. "I'm happy for you."

"We both are," her father said, sounding more conflicted than her mother had, almost as if he'd resigned himself to the news. At least he wasn't screaming at her, or calling her an impulsive child. It would have to do for now.

"Have you set a date yet?" her mother asked, and Brenda explained that they wanted to wait until they could be sure that both of their families could be there. Brenda promised that her parents would be the first to know the details, and after a few more minutes of chit chat, they hung up.

"How on Earth did you get that ring from them?" she asked Dylan as she ditched the robe and climbed back in bed.

"They weren't happy?"

"They were… tense," Brenda answered. "They kept saying they were happy, but I didn't hear any jumping for joy."

She settled back against his chest and he dropped a kiss to the back of her head, wrapping an arm around her waist. She felt more secure and comfortable sitting with him this way than she had in a long, long time.

"Iris and Erica will jump enough for the four of them," Dylan reassured her. "And your parents will come around eventually"

"Promise?"

"I promise," he used one hand to turn her face to his, and they kissed again. "I wouldn't have convinced them to give me the ring if they didn't think we could make this work."

Brenda didn't have the heart to tell him that she didn't want her parents to 'be okay' with their engagement or to 'come around' or to 'think they could make it work.' She wanted them to be squeeling for joy and naming their grandchildren and talking about china patterns, the way they had for Brandon and Kelly who hadn't even gotten married in the end. Instead, Jim and Cindy were barely restraining themselves from expressing their doubts about the engagement.

"How _did _you get the ring?"

Dylan took a deep breath and then he told her the story, about how Kelly had proposed and all he could think about was Brenda. He told her he'd first called Brandon to try to get the ring, and her brother had given him her parents' number. When he called them, her mother had said either Jim's brother or sister had the ring and gave him their numbers.

"I gave up for awhile after that," he admitted quietly. "It was right after you told me you were seeing that guy… Tim?"

"You've been thinking about this that long?" Brenda gasped.

"Longer," he answered. A few weeks later, he told her, when he found out that Tim was no longer in the picture, Dylan had called her aunt, who'd said that if Jim didn't have it, their brother must, because Heavens knew Grandma Walsh would never dream of entrusting her daughter with something so important.

"Grandma refused to give the ring to Uncle Rich when he proposed, so Aunt Mary's always been bitter," Brenda explained. "Uncle Rich is an idiot, and they got divorced a few months after they got married, but Mary never forgave Grandma."

So Dylan had called her uncle, who'd told her that Jim definitely had the ring, and even if her uncle had had the ring, he wouldn't be likely to give it to some stranger for his niece when he had his own children to think about.

"Uncle Howard's kind of a jerk."

Dylan had finally called her parents again, and when they hadn't returned his calls, he flew to Hong Kong in person to convince them. Cindy, of course, had caved first, but eventually, Dylan had convinced Jim that he deserved a chance to at least ask Brenda.

"I told them how much I love you," Dylan explained, running a hand through her hair and staring into her eyes. "I said that I knew I had no right to ask them, let alone to ask you, but that I knew what the ring meant, and that no matter what I've done, you've always been at the forefront of my mind."

By the time he'd left Hong Kong (with the ring), he'd believed that Brenda's parents might actually be rooting for him. If Brenda thought it was an overly optimistic belief, she wasn't about to tell Dylan that. Instead, she turned in his arms to kiss him.

"You are an amazing man, Dylan McKay," she whispered against his mouth. "And I really am lucky to have you."

"I'm the lucky one," he answered, kissing her back and rolling them so that she was on top of him. "You have known idea how lucky I am."

"We both are."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~


	9. Chapter 9

A/N: This chapter is a little bit of a 'day in the life' kind of thing, rather than actually moving the plot forward, so sorry about that if it's boring, but it does set some stuff up, and it keeps the fluff for a little while longer. There are hints about where the angst is going to come in, though, so watch out for those.

**Part Nine**

"I hate that movie," Dylan announced, pulling Brenda back against his chest. She laughed as she continued to put on her earrings. "It's a stupid movie."

Brenda turned, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him. She pulled back too soon and stepped away from him, crossing the room to take her jacket off of the chair where she'd discarded it about two seconds after she'd walked in the door. He'd told her that it was completely unnecessary to go back to her hotel and pick up some clothes to bring back his room. They hadn't spent much time clothed over the last week.

"You better not say that when I drag you to the premiere," she threatened, kissing Dylan's cheek and grabbing her purse. "Don't forget that we're having dinner with Val and Andrea's family tonight."

"I won't forget," he promised, giving her a real kiss in response to the peck on the cheek. "Don't forget how much handsomer and more charming I am than your costar."

"Who are you again?"

"Ha ha."

"Call your mother."

And then she left him alone in the honeymoon suite, for the first time since the night of their engagement. Dylan sighed as he saw her ring sitting on the vanity. She'd explained that she didn't want to say anything publicly until Brandon knew, and since Brandon hadn't been in touch with them yet, they were pretending that they were only 'back together' even to their closest friends. No one but family knew that they were getting married, and at that it was only her family. He hadn't gotten around to calling Iris and Erica yet.

He understood Brenda's reluctance and her motives; it was just that he wanted to tell everyone, to get married as soon as possible, and to move forward.

Deciding that sitting around the room missing her and feeling sorry for himself would do nothing for his mood, Dylan grabbed his own jacket and left the hotel, only to realize that he had nowhere to go. The Peach Pit had been running without him since… well, since before he'd ever been Nat's 'silent partner.' The After Dark wasn't really any of his concern, and going there would mean seeing Noah, who Dylan hadn't really liked all that much _before_ Noah's stupidity had put them both in serious danger. There were no classes to go to or homework to be done, since Dylan had graduated two weeks ago. That left only the community center, where he had no official title or role. In fact, he sometimes got the feeling that he was more in the way than he was helpful.

He needed a job or a hobby or something to keep him busy, especially now that he was engaged to the woman who'd defined workaholism.

With a sigh, Dylan decided to head for the beach. The surf wouldn't be great, but at least surfing was something to do with himself while he waited for Brenda to get out of work. That had been the problem in London; Dylan spent the better part of three years waiting for Brenda to get out of school or work. Even when he'd been taking classes, it was never quite as time consuming as acting was for Brenda. It still felt like it was just something to do.

Brenda was beyond passionate about her work. She sometimes spent twenty hours at the theater without complaint, and even though she took on the movie roles more to pay the bills than for love of film work, she threw her whole self into each part. For months before work even began on a movie or a play, she'd spend hours 'getting to know' her character. She'd be in touch with the writer, the director, each of the producers and each of her co-stars. It got to the point where the first rehearsal might as well be a performance on her part.

Part of her drive, Dylan knew, came from her personality. She approached everything she did with energy and determination. She'd studied harder than anyone at West Beverly, except maybe Andrea Zuckerman, and if Brenda had floundered at California University, it had been because she was unhappy.

But the real force behind Brenda's approach to acting was a love of what she did. She wanted to do well because she felt that the work deserved her attention. Dylan couldn't remember the last time he'd felt that passionately.

And then, as he was riding his fourth wave, it hit him.

The last time he'd felt that passionate about anything, it had been when he was writing the ill-fated script, the script that had ultimately destroyed his life. The script that had led him to offer Kelly a trip around the world, destroying his friendship with Brandon. The script that had put him in mortal danger and then sent him on the quest that eventually led to Toni. Before that, he'd felt a similar need to work when he'd been writing his "memoirs," which had ultimately been a jumbled mess of feelings describing his father's death.

No wonder he'd blocked both memories out, he thought as the wave crashed to the shore. Still, the realization had given him something to think about.

Dylan used the rest of his spare time that day considering his options. He looked into graduate programs and even went to the library to take out books about 'the writing life.' He stopped into a stationary store and bought a thick leather bound journal, and later, back at the hotel, he flipped through works by his favorite authors for inspiration.

He considered it a very good sign when he was surprised to find Brenda back at the hotel 'so soon.'

"Okay, maybe I hate that movie too," she announced as she walked through the door. She immediately crawled onto his lap and planted a kiss on his cheek. "That was too much time away from you."

"Did you get a lot filmed?"

"Hardly anything," Brenda leaned back against him, fidgeting until she was comfortable. "One of my costars was an hour late and I swear no one else even read the script. Grad school?"

Dylan followed her gaze and saw that the computer was still open, still showing the results of his search for schools in LA, New York or London. "Just something I'm thinking about," he answered. "It would be a long time off if I do it at all."

He told her about his epiphany and showed her his new books and his journal.

"That's great, Dylan," when she smiled at him, Dylan could see pride etched into her features. "I think you'll be an amazing writer. Have you thought about what format you want to work in?"

"I don't really know," he shrugged. "I guess I'd probably stick to scripts, but I'd like to try my hand at a novel."

"The Great American Novel," Brenda slipped off of his lap and moved over to the closet, where she'd hung a few dresses that she brought over from the Omni. "And you haven't even been in Paris lately."

"We could go," Dylan took her cue and began to get ready for dinner himself, pulling out a suit and tie. "On our honeymoon."

"If we go to Paris on our honeymoon, I'll spend the whole time thinking about you and Kelly and you'll spend the whole time thinking about me and Rick," Brenda pointed out. She laid a dress on the bed and moved to the bathroom door. "I'm going to take a shower. Care to join me?"

She didn't need to ask him twice.

Later, when they were sated, clean and dressed and Brenda's hair and makeup was done, they both stood staring at the ring, still sitting on the vanity.

"Brandon still hasn't returned any of my calls," Brenda announced needlessly. Dylan could see how worried she was; although he knew she was trying to hide it.

"He will," Dylan promised, wrapping his arms around her. "Soon."

"My parents haven't heard from him either."

Dylan didn't know what to say; he'd never had someone in his life who meant to him what Brandon meant to Brenda, except maybe Brandon himself, but that relationship had been severely tarnished over the years.

"We've never gone a whole week without at least checking in," Brenda picked up the ring but there were tears in her eyes. She wiped them away and slid the ring in place.

"We can wait," Dylan met her eyes in the mirror. "I don't want you to feel pressured…"

"They're going to ask," Brenda explained, her eyes not leaving his. "Val and Andrea know you proposed, they know I answered, they know we've been holed up here. They're going to ask what I said and it wouldn't be fair to leave them hanging."

With that, they were on their way to the restaurant. Brenda tried Brandon's number again from the car, but there was still no answer, and so, when they reached the restaurant, Brenda's first words to her friends were "if either of you tells Brandon before I can, I'll eviscerate you both," followed by "we're getting married."

"We know," Andrea told her, after telling Hannah that 'eviscerate' meant 'be really upset with.'

"We've known since the first time he proposed," Val added. "But congratulations."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~


	10. Chapter 10

**Part Ten**

Maybe it was because she'd been away for awhile, or maybe it was because she wasn't really a part of "the gang" anymore, or maybe it was just that she'd grown up, but lately, whenever she found herself with the group of people she'd once called friends, Brenda wondered why the Hell they all bothered any more.

It wasn't that she didn't genuinely care for them as individuals (even Kelly). Donna had a generous heart and a gentle spirit, and Kelly, for all her faults, had had a disastrous childhood to contend with, and yet she had somehow learned to care deeply about the world around her. Janet was smart and funny and incredibly down to Earth, and even though Brenda had only just met Janet, she could imagine the two of them becoming very close friends. Steve had grown up to become a great father and friend, and David was incredibly talented and devoted to his work (and he was still a fabulous dancer, too). Val and Andrea were Brenda's strongest support system, her best friends, and Dylan was the love of her life. And of course, Brandon was her twin. But the idea of the nine of them (plus Noah, who Brenda barely knew and _didn't_ like) as one cohesive group was ridiculous.

Looking at their romantic relationships, the crossover was astounding. There was the Brenda-Dylan-Kelly-Val-Brandon pentagon from Hell, but there was also the Donna-David-Val-Noah square (which, according to Brandon, got even more complicated when you added the Kelly-Noah flirtation into the mix), the Kelly-Matt-Donna-David square, and even Steve had been with Kelly and Val and flirted/made out with Andrea. At Donna's bachelorette party, there wasn't a single woman in the room who had not at least kissed another woman in the room's significant other, except Janet, whose husband had kissed three other attendees, and Jackie Taylor, Felice Martin, and Mrs. Teasely, who were, well, kind of old. And even Jackie had almost seen her ex-husband marry Val's mother (and in Brenda's mind, Bill and Abby deserved each other – and not in a good way).

It didn't seem healthy for them all to maintain these ties over all these years, although God knew Brenda was trying as hard as any of them. Ultimately, she cared too much about the individuals to walk away from the group, and she suspected that that was the reason they all kept trying, whether it made any sense or not.

That said, the bachelorette party wasn't nearly as bad as she'd expected it to be. Aside from a few dirty looks from Kelly (and boy was Brenda excited to see her former friend's reaction when she found out Brenda wasn't just with Dylan, but that she was actually marrying him), everyone was cordial, polite and tipsy (thanks to Val, who'd brought a giant bottle of expensive tequila – probably on Brenda's tab), and there was a lot of laughter. In a lot of ways, it felt like nothing had changed – as long as the conversation stayed superficial.

Brenda even went a few hours without thinking about the fact that Brandon had yet to call her back. Of course, once she'd realized this, she'd whipped her phone out to make sure she hadn't somehow missed a call.

She hadn't.

With a sigh, Brenda gulped down the last of her tequila-spiked punch and unsteadily rose to her feet. Announcing that she was going to get some air, Brenda slipped out onto the porch and began dialing.

"Brandon, it's me, again," she began as the answering service clicked on. "Look, I'm going crazy here. You're not calling me, you're not calling Mom. Steve said he hasn't heard from you in months and I haven't even seen your byline in a few weeks now. I don't know what the Hell is going on with you but I'm officially freaked out, so you need to let me know that you're alive because you're in a fucking _war zone_ Brandon…"

Knowing that she was getting hysterical, Brenda took a few deep breaths to steady herself, wiping at the few frantic tears that had fallen from her eyes. Then she spoke again.

"Brandon, please, just please call me and let me know you're okay," she half whispered. "Please. I need to hear your voice. And like I said in my other thousand messages, I have something to tell you. Something pretty life altering that I really need to tell you before someone else does. So call me. Please. Brandon, please call me."

"I'm not sure you and Dylan getting back together counts as life altering," a voice came from behind her, causing Brenda to jump and spin to face the apartment door.

"Kelly," she gasped. "I didn't hear you… how long have you been there?"

"I came out around life altering," Kelly answered, moving forward to lean against the banister, facing Brenda. "I thought we should probably clear the air between us. You know, for Donna's sake. And for Dylan's."

"For Dylan's sake?"

"He's one of my best friends," Kelly told her, although the way she said it, it seemed more like marking her territory more than clearing the air to Brenda, but for Donna's sake, she kept quiet. "And I know I'm one of his. I'm not going to let him disappear from my life just because you're back in his."

"I was never out of his life," Brenda couldn't stop herself from correcting. "I've been in his life for ten years."

"He hasn't even mentioned you since he got back," Kelly seemed to realize how sharp her tone was, and she took a deep breath, turning out to face ocean. Brenda stareed at her for a few moments, lost in thought.

It had suddenly hit her that as long as she'd known Kelly they'd been in competition; to be the prettiest, the most popular, to have the best home life, and yes, to have Dylan. Once upon a time, Kelly had seemed like the ideal woman, back when she'd had money and clothes and friends and when half the boys in school would have given their right arms to be with her. But back then, in the beginning, Dylan had chosen Brenda. He'd chased Brenda, he'd _wanted_ Brenda.

At first, that had been all that mattered. She'd _liked_ Dylan. He was attractive and intelligent and gentle and he'd made it clear that he adored her. But it had taken Brenda a long time to realize the depth of her own feelings. Because deep down, she was waiting for him to realize that she wasn't really who he wanted.

She'd been waiting for him to realize that she wasn't perfect, like Kelly.

It had taken her a long time to get past the image of Kelly as perfection, especially after Dylan had actually chosen Kelly.

But Brenda had gotten past that particular insecurity, and now she found herself face to face with the possibility that Kelly had had the same feelings about Brenda, and that maybe Kelly had never gotten past it. The thought stopped Brenda cold.

"I'm sorry," Kelly muttered, oblivious to Brenda's thoughts. "That was… he has mentioned you. I just… I didn't think… I wasn't exactly prepared for this."

"Kelly, you told me you guys didn't belong together," Brenda reminded her. "_You _told me that it was over between you two. You're engaged, Kelly. You're _marrying_ Matt. It isn't fair to him, to me, to Dylan or to yourself for you to keep holding onto Dylan. It isn't healthy."

"I'm not the only one who's still pining here," Kelly pointed out, turning to face Brenda once more. "You wouldn't even be in California right now if you weren't still pining."

Brenda didn't answer her immediately, turning to watch the waves, barely visible in the moonlight. The tide was low, and the waves weren't exactly crashing so much as wafting to shore. No one seemed to be on the stretch of beach outside Donna and Kelly's apartment. Out of the corner of her eye, through the living room window, Brenda could see the rest of the bachelorette partiers laughing and dancing.

"It's different Kel," Brenda finally said, keeping her voice low. "You weren't happy together. You weren't good together. You know that."

This time, it was Kelly who took several minutes to answer.

"I'm not ready to let him go yet," she finally answered. "Maybe that's wrong, and I'm sorry if it hurts you, but I'm not ready."

"You can't have it both ways," Brenda told her sadly. "You can't be my friend and go after my… boyfriend. Not now."

It hurt not to be able to say fiancé. It hurt not to be able to share what should be happy news with an old friend. It hurt to know that Kelly wasn't exactly an old friend, not anymore, and that even if Brenda could share her news, Kelly wouldn't be happy about it.

"I'm not going after your boyfriend."

"Don't kid yourself, Kelly," Brenda snapped. Years of frustration with the mess of a situation the three of them had stumbled into, combined with the stress of not knowing where Brandon was and of keeping her engagement a secret, seemed to have unleashed Brenda's least favorite side of herself; the side that had led her to slap Andrea years ago, over a boy whose name she couldn't even remember. "You went after Dylan all those years ago, and you're going after him now. Just like you went after Matt when he was married and after Brandon when he was with Tracey and after John Sears when you were with Dylan. Hell you even went after Noah when he was with Val and you were with Brandon…"

"I had amnesia…"

"It doesn't change the facts," Brenda rolled her eyes. "We're not teenagers anymore, Kelly. You made a commitment to Matt and Dylan made a commitment to me. It's time for you to honor that. If Matt isn't really the one for you, fine. But Dylan made his choice Kelly. _He_ came after _me_ this time. I never made a move on him when he was with you. Please show me the same respect."

"And if I can't?"

Brenda just shook her head, and the conversation ended there, as Donna drunkenly called them back inside to play some bachelorette game that involved more tequila and the naked (photoshopped) poster of David that Val had brought. Both Brenda and Kelly showcased the acting talent Roy Randolph had admired in each of them, smiling and laughing and pretending that their conversation on the balcony had been inconsequential.

Later though, as she walked along the shore with Val and Andrea (their designated driver for the weekend), Brenda fell apart, sinking to her knees and gasping for air. Val and Andrea immediately sat on the sand beside her, reaching out to wrap their arms around her.

"I should be happy," Brenda cried. "I should be _happy._ Why don't I get to be happy?"

"Oh Brenda," Andrea whispered, patting her back.

"My brother is missing in a _war zone_. My friends are practically unrecognizable…"

"Hey," Val and Andrea exclaimed in unison.

"Not you guys," Brenda answered quickly, "but _them_. They're all different and for some reason, I can't win with them. And I'm engaged. I'm engaged to a _wonderful, wonderful _man, who I _love_ more than anything. And he's _finally_ ready. He's _finally_ growing up and he _loves_ me. I should be happy."

"But you're not," Val's words were half statement, half question.

"I'm not," tears began falling down Brenda's face for the second time that night. "I'm not happy because my parents basically only gave Dylan the stupid ring because they've given up on me, and because when _they_" Brenda gestured back towards the beach apartment "are going to be anything but happy for me. I should be celebrating this, and I can't and Brandon doesn't even know I'm engaged."

Speaking the words aloud, Brenda's eyes widened and she found herself gasping for air again. She was getting married and her brother had no idea. Well, seeing as Dylan had called Brandon first, he might have some idea, but still… he didn't know she'd said yes. He didn't know they were living together. Her life had completely changed and her brother wasn't a part of it.

"What if he's hurt?" she whispered, through her tears. "What if he's dead?"

"Hey," Andrea shook her head forcefully. "None of that. He's not dead. You're his twin. You'd know."

"Or at least, the paper would know," Val cut in, probably realizing that the twin-power theory would drive Brenda crazy. "_Someone_ would know, and they'd tell you."

"He hasn't called anyone. It isn't just me. He isn't in touch with anyone; he hasn't written an article in weeks. And I am so, so scared."

Val and Andrea held onto Brenda as she sobbed on the beach, and then they all slowly stood and made their way back to the parking lot.

Back at the hotel, Dylan was already back from David's bachelor party and waiting up with a book, the way her parents always had. The main difference was that she was pretty sure Dylan was actually reading the book.

"Oops," she quipped as she walked into the room. "Did I miss curfew?"

"You've been a bad girl," Dylan smirked as he set the book down and rose to greet her. He wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her hungrily. When they pulled apart for air, Brenda lay her head on his chest and took a deep breath. "Everything okay?"

"Hmm?"

"You seem upset."

Brenda looked up at him, meeting his eyes, and gazed at him for a few long moments, before laying her head back on his chest. His hands rubbed small circles along Brenda's back, and she felt a whisper of a kiss at the top of her head.

"I love you," Brenda whispered. "That's all that matters."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

A/N: The next one is going to be a little different; I'm going back in time a few hours, to show a little snip of the bachelor party. So hopefully that won't confuse too many people… then it's on to the wedding (Donna/David's, that is), and THEN we will find out why Brandon is out of contact with everyone.


	11. Chapter 11

A/N: In these next sets of chapters, I'm going to try to introduce a couple other characters' relationships into the story, but because I'm only writing from Brenda and Dylan's POVs, it gets a little awkward, so hopefully you'll stick with me for the ride, and hopefully you'll enjoy it. Constructive criticism is always appreciated.

As I mentioned in the A/N for the last one, this jumps back a few hours, so Dylan is at the bachelor party, and there's a flashback to about a year and a half before _that_ when Dylan is leaving London. Then the next chapter picks up back at Brenda and Dylan's hotel room after the bachelor/bachelorette parties, and parts twelve and thirteen take place at the wedding and reception. Does that make sense to everyone?

**Part Eleven**

Bachelor parties, it turned out, were not Dylan's favorite thing ever. For one thing, they involved copious amounts of alcohol, which Dylan was no longer drinking. For another thing, Dylan had never been much of a man's man. Strippers and sex jokes didn't get to him the way they got to other guys. He'd never been a kiss-and-tell kind of guy and he didn't want to confide in a bunch of men he barely knew. Steve and David might be his friends, but Matt, Noah and Mel certainly were not. The only guy Dylan had ever truly wanted to confide in was Brandon, and Brandon still hadn't returned anyone's calls.

Brenda was beginning to panic, and if Dylan were the type to panic, he would be too. Not only because Brandon was like a brother to Dylan and he was genuinely concerned about his friend, but also because Dylan knew Brenda couldn't consider planning a wedding without Brandon at least knowing she was engaged. They would never really be engaged until Brandon knew they were engaged, and Dylan worried every day that she would realize she'd made a mistake and walk about without ever really thinking it was real.

When the crowd in Steve's living room got too rowdy, and Dylan saw David slip out of the room and head towards the backyard, Dylan used it as an excuse to escape himself, and followed the groom-to-be out.

"It's funny," he said as he handed David a beer and took a swig of his own soda. "No matter how many years pass, I still feel like Jim Walsh is about to come out with a baseball bat and chase me off his property."

"I smell Cindy's muffins every time I come over," David chuckled. "Would Jim really chase you off now?"

"I'm sleeping with his daughter," Dylan shrugged, staring into the night sky. "Jim'll never be okay with that. Not after everything."

He could feel David's eyes on him, but he didn't say anything more. Everything had gone so very badly so many times before, he had hurt Brenda so many times, that he understood her parents' position. He wouldn't want to see Erica with an unemployed addict who'd cheated on her and broken her heart more than once in the past, even if said addict was a multi-millionaire, even if said addict was clean and had promised to change, even if he knew the addict loved Erica as much as Dylan loved Brenda. He knew why, as Brenda's parents, the Walshes would have trouble accepting him as Brenda's partner and future husband.

But Jim and Cindy weren't only Brenda's parents. They were, much as Dylan loved his own parents, the first adults who'd truly cared for him. They'd taken him into their home and they'd treated him as their son. He wasn't a stranger who'd gotten involved with their daughter the way he had once been. He was someone who'd come to love and respect Jim and Cindy, someone who'd looked up to them, who'd craved their approval in ways he had never craved the approval of his own parents. To be constantly considered lacking in their eyes was more hurtful than he liked to admit. And it was something he could never talk to Brenda about without making her feel responsible, which he didn't want to do.

The whole situation sucked, beyond belief, and it killed Dylan that nothing about this engagement was going the way it was supposed to. He was pretty sure he didn't deserve to just be happy, but Brenda did, and he hated to see her so affected by everything.

"So thing with Brenda," David interrupted his thoughts, taking a gulp of his beer and looking at Dylan out of the corner of his eye. "They're serious this time?"

"This time?" Dylan echoed, looking back at David. He could hear the skepticism in his friend's voice and it bothered him. He would have thought that David, of all people, would understand.

"I just mean…" David cast a deer-in-headlights look his way and swallowed hard. "How do you know it's her? All these years going back and forth between her and Kelly, how did you choose? How do you know you chose right?"

There was a note of uncertainty in his voice, and it occurred to Dylan that the question might not come from a place of skepticism so much as it might be David trying to find his own answers. After everything they'd been through in the last year or so, David was still coming to him for romantic advice, and Dylan actually felt qualified to give it, for once.

"It was always her," he answered honestly. "With Kelly… I turned to her when thing went wrong. But when it blows up the way it always does, it feels over, until the next time I'm lonely or upset or the next time someone else hurts me."

"And with Brenda?"

"With Brenda it's never felt over," Dylan smiled, thinking back on all the fights and all the breakups. There had been times over the years when he hadn't been all in, times when he'd been unsure and afraid to commit to Brenda, or times when he'd felt ready to commit to someone else. But he had never been all out. The closest he'd ever come was the night he'd left London, and even then, he'd believed they'd be together again some day, no matter what they said at the time.

_It was Halloween night and they'd gone to a No-Costume Party at the house of one of Brenda's costars, who was living with a friend of Brenda's from school, a friend who happened to be male, and happened to be someone she'd casually dated before Dylan had arrived in London. Brenda and the guy, Mitch, had stayed good friends, and there was always a flirtatiousness to it that had bothered Dylan. _

_In fact, it was the reason he'd tagged along to this party at all. He wasn't normally big on spending time with Brenda's friends from the theatre. He didn't particularly like any of them, and he didn't like the constant reminders that they shared an aspect of her life that he had very limited access to. Brenda was very private about her work. Whenever he asked about it (which wasn't often anymore), she gave him some weak answer about how she needed to keep her acting life and her real life separate or she'd go crazy._

_It seemed like she was trying to keep him separate from the rest of her life._

"_Is that a drink?"_

"_No."_

"_Dylan…"_

"_Look. You can see that it's a drink. We both know it's a drink. You dragged me to this thing and I'm drinking. Deal with it."_

"_You _insisted_ on coming here. I told you I was perfectly happy coming alone and you _insisted. _And we get here and you've been nothing but a surly ass, the whole time we've been here. And now you're drinking and my friends are staring."_

"_I'm sure _Mitch_ would never make a scene like this."_

"_Okay, we're leaving. Mitch, Anna, I am so sorry about this. It was a lovely party."_

_They fought the whole way home, and long into the night, until Dylan heard himself demanding they move back to California. When she refused, he packed his things and told her he was moving back by himself. He was gone within twelve hours._

_Within thirteen hours, he'd regretted it._

_Instead of heading back to LA right away, he took a hotel room in the city and watched her for a few weeks, as discreetly as he could. She kept acting, of course, and she went out with her friends. She stayed in the same apartment where she'd lived since before he arrived in London. He'd broken an engagement, after months of them against the world, fighting to get approval from her family and her friends, but his leaving barely seemed to affect her life._

_And then Val showed up, and Dylan knew she wasn't as okay as she'd seemed. He overheard them talking outside the theatre one night, and the more Val tried to convince Brenda that she was better off without Dylan, the more she convinced Dylan of that fact. _

_So he finally left. He told himself that he would get better, get sober, get healthy and come back to her. After rehab, after he decided he was better enough to try again, he called her, and found out she was in New York, now, and that she was seeing someone. So he stayed away._

_But it had never felt like goodbye. From the time he'd first called until his graduation, they'd stayed in contact. They'd even seen each other briefly, when she was filming in Seattle, when he'd told Kelly he was surfing and she'd thought he'd died. That was when he'd realized she didn't really think it was over between them, either._

_He'd made the trip to Tokyo for the ring, after that._

"A few months ago," Dylan told David, wanting to explain himself more thoroughly, "Kelly asked me to marry her. Or, well, she told me to marry her or leave her alone. It was more of a threat than a proposal. But she asked me to commit to her. And I thought about it, for a nanosecond."

"You thought about it?"

"I did," Dylan shrugged. "And my first thought was, if I marry her, I'll never be with Brenda again. She won't even be a part of my life."

"So you're with Brenda because she won't make you choose?"

"I'm with Brenda because Kelly proposed and Brenda was all I could think about, and because even when we were apart or fighting or just friends, I thought about her every single day, several times a day," Dylan answered. Brenda had been there for all the best and worst days of his life, aside from the day he'd married Toni and the day Toni died, and even then, both days she'd contacted him. She'd loved him when he never deserved it, because she looked at him and she saw who he really was and she loved it all, even the parts she hated. "I'm marrying Brenda because…"

David spat out his drink as his head snapped to face his friend, splattering his spit and beer on Dylan's shoe.

"Did you say marrying?" he gasped. "You're _marrying _Brenda."

"I am," he admitted with a sigh. He hadn't intended to make that slip and regretted it, if only because he'd broken a promise to Brenda to keep it quiet. "We aren't telling anyone. Not yet. Not until Brandon knows, but yeah, I am."

"Wow," David shook his head in surprise. "Congratulations."

They fell silent for awhile, as the noise from inside continued. He could hear traces of music Dylan would never choose to listen to on his own, and he heard peals of male laughter.

"I don't think marrying Donna is the right decision," David finally spoke. "I don't think I can do this."

"Hey bachelor!" Steve's head popped out the window. "This is _your _party! Get in here! You too McKay!"

~*~*~*~*~*~*~


	12. Chapter 12

A/N: I'm still trying to work with some of the other couples in this, so there's a lot of D/D, B/K, and even Andrea/Jesse drama in this chapter, more than there is B/D. BUT in the next part you'll find out BOTH whether David goes through with it, and what the heck is up with Brandon. There's a line in this part that's important, if you're looking for clues. Well, it's not really a clue. Anyway, this one's the first of two parts covering the D/D wedding or non-wedding. Enjoy.

**Part Twelve**

"He really said he couldn't marry Donna?" Brenda lifted her head from Dylan's chest, staring into his eyes. They were lounging in bed the morning of the wedding, and Dylan had just told her about his conversation with David outside the Walsh house, the Walsh house that wasn't the Walsh house at all anymore. "He used those words?"

"He said he didn't think it was the right decision," Dylan confirmed with a little nod, running a hand along Brenda's back and sending shivers up and down her spine. Even in the middle of a serious conversation about the fate of their friends' marriage, the boy could get her worked up. It was actually kind of an amazing skill. "He didn't actually say for sure that he wasn't going to go through with it. He just sounded panicked."

"And that's it?" Brenda pressed. "That's all? You didn't talk about it?"

"Steve interrupted us," Dylan answered, his fingers still running circles against her skin. "I'm sure it's just cold feet."

"Maybe."

Inside, Brenda was praying that David wasn't about to do something incredibly stupid, and that if he was, he wouldn't bring Valerie into it. If David was asking Dylan how he'd chosen between Brenda and Kelly, then David's doubts were more than just cold feet. There was someone making him doubt his choice, someone making him question his love for Donna. Brenda knew Valerie still had feelings for David, that they had never had closure, and she also knew that if Valerie was the third angle in the David-Donna-whoever triangle, there was nothing but hurt ahead for her, and Valerie had been through enough.

Brenda knew first hand what it was like to be one of the angles in a Beverly Hills love triangle. She knew how much it hurt to love someone and know he loved you and watch him love someone else. Someone blond and wealthy and skinny and beautiful, someone with whom he'd shared history, going back to kindergarten. Someone who loved him just as much (or at least almost as much) as she did. Dylan had changed his mind. He'd chosen her, and Brenda believed that he meant it. But the triangle still hurt, and every false start since she'd known there was a triangle had made it all the worse. She didn't want Val to go through David's indecision the way Brenda had gone through Dylan's.

But Brenda couldn't tell Dylan any of this without sounding like she was second guessing her decisions and his own, and that wasn't the point, so she just lay her head back down on his chest, and ran her fingers across his chest.

"Andrea's getting divorced," she whispered after a few seconds. "She told us in the car. I guess she and Jesse have been fighting since they landed. He's taking Hannah back to New York tomorrow, and drawing up another set of papers. Andrea's going to move in with Val."

"Doesn't Val live with you?"

"Downstairs from me," Brenda corrected, shaking her head ever so slightly, just enough so he'd feel it against his skin. Dylan was completely missing the point, and she told him so.

"It's Andrea and Jesse," Dylan answered with look that seemed to suggest he thought that explained everything. "They've been on the brink of divorce since the day they were married. It isn't good for Hannah that they keep almost getting divorced and then not going through with it."

He was right of course. Even Andrea hadn't seemed that upset about it. She'd just quietly mentioned it as she dropped Brenda and Val off at the hotel. She said they'd tried a hundred times to fix things between them and it wasn't working, and she admitted that she hadn't spent more than a few minutes in his company since the night that Brenda and Dylan had announced their engagement over dinner.

"They're a family," Brenda whispered. "It's Andrea's family. And Donna and David are Donna and David, and Brandon and Kelly were supposed to be forever. And if none of them can make it work…"

"We will," Dylan held her tighter, dropping a kiss to her forehead. "Even if Donna and David don't get married, even if Andrea and Jesse really get divorced this time, even though Brandon and Kelly didn't make it. We will."

"I thought that last time," Brenda's voice was so low even she could barely hear it, so low that he shouldn't have heard her, but from the way he tensed up, she knew he did. She couldn't help her doubts, though. Not when she'd lain in his arms and been convinced that this time they would make it work a hundred times before.

"_My parents aren't happy," she'd announced on a beach in Greece. They'd gone on vacation, to celebrate their engagement, and they were sitting together in the sand, legs and arms entwined in odd and seemingly awkward ways that only a couple would find comfortable. "I don't care."_

_She kissed him, and then suddenly he was tickling her, which seemed incredibly out of place, but it was so very them that she didn't question it, didn't realize then that he must have been deflecting. She let out a peal of laughter and tickled back._

"_We'll prove them wrong," she told him, when the tickle war was over. "I know we've had problems, but this, us… it's right now. I can feel it."_

_A month later he was gone._

A few months after that she heard from Andrea (who heard from Donna) and from Valerie (who heard from David) that he was seeing Kelly again, or at least, that he was trying to see Kelly again. She had a right to be skeptical now.

"We should get dressed," Dylan announced, pulling away from her. His voice had gone slightly cold, and she knew he'd heard her last whispered line, and she knew he wasn't going to respond to it either. "If David hasn't called I doubt he's calling the wedding off."

Hours later, they were filing into the church. Well, Brenda was filing, with Valerie and Andrea, into a pew behind Jackie, Mel, Erin and Felice. Dylan was at the back of the church, talking to the minister and Kelly, which meant that Brenda was casting nervous glances towards the back every few seconds. When she wasn't watching her fiancé and her former best friend, she was watching the crowd.

It seemed like the whole 1993 graduating class of West Beverly was in attendance, along with a number of the 1994 alums (David's original classmates). It made Brandon's absence all the more conspicuous, and more than one person stopped by Brenda's pew to ask how he was doing and was he coming. Finally, she got sick of it, and she told Val and Andrea that she was going to check on Donna.

Leaving her purse on the seat, she didn't notice that her phone, on silent, was glowing in the dim church light.

"Donna," she called quietly when she reached the bride's room at the back of the chapel, after passing Dylan, Kelly and the minister without a word. "Are you in here?"

Donna turned away from the mirror to face the doorway, giving Brenda a nervous smile, and smoothing down the folds of her skirt. It still startled Brenda every time she saw the darker shade that Donna had died her hair, as Brenda would never quite be able to think of her old friend as anything other than a blond. The hair suited her though, and the strapless dress was perfect for Donna. The whole wedding was perfect for Donna, and Brenda hoped for her friend's sake that it would happen.

"Hi," Donna greeted.

"Hi," Brenda answered. "I know I'm not in the wedding party or anything, but I wanted to come back and check on you."

"I'm glad," Donna sat back awkwardly onto the seat at the vanity, and gestured for Brenda to sit nearby. "I'm glad you're here."

"Me, too," Brenda smiled genuinely. Whatever her problems with Kelly over the years, whatever her problems with Beverly Hills in general, Brenda still felt a deep affection towards Donna, and even though they were nowhere near as close as they had once been, Brenda still considered her a very dear friend.

"I wish Brandon could have made it."

"Me, too," Brenda repeated, her voice lower, softer, this time. "You have no idea how much I wish…"

"Brenda, are you okay?" Donna's face was so concerned that Brenda almost let herself break down. But this was supposed to be the best day of Donna's life (and if David called it off, which, according to Dylan, he might, it might be the worst day of Donna's life), and Brenda shook her sadness away.

Brandon would call her.

He had to.

"I'm fine," she answered with a forced smile. "Everything's fine. And you're a beautiful bride."

The door creaked open just then, and Kelly and Janet walked in, each holding their bouquets, and each wearing matching purple dresses that somehow managed to highlight each of their stellar figures perfectly.

"Almost show time," Janet announced. "You ready?"

"Do you think it's normal to be this nervous?" Donna's own smile seemed forced now, and Brenda wondered if David might not be the only one with doubts. "I'm really nervous. Should I be this nervous?"

"I wasn't nervous," Janet offered, sitting next to Donna at the vanity. "For a long time, I was, before we actually started planning the wedding. But it didn't have anything to do with Steve. I was nervous about marriage and about the future, but I knew that I loved Steve, and I knew that he loved me. That part, I wasn't nervous about."

"I was terrified, with Stuart," Brenda answered carefully. She didn't want to let on that she knew David was having his own doubts, and she didn't want to talk Donna out of marrying David, not by any means. Really, she couldn't imagine Donna and David without each other; she'd only ever really known them together. But she also didn't want to talk Donna into marrying David if neither of them were ready for it. "That's why I knew it was wrong. There was so much I didn't know about him, about what he wanted from the future… I was so unsure about everything."

A part of Brenda wanted to come clean about her engagement to Dylan now, but she knew that would be taking Donna's special day away from her, and she didn't want to do that. And she didn't want to deal with Kelly's reaction, either. Not yet.

"I was nervous," Kelly admitted. Her voice startled Brenda, because for the first time in a very, very long time, her old friend actually sounded unsteady. She actually sounded insecure. "I mean, Brandon proposed to get me to stop arguing with him" (Brenda fought back a smirk at that). "He'd cheated on me just a few months earlier, and I was terrified that I was setting myself up for a fall. I lost sight of the fact that it was Brandon, and it was me, and that he would never hurt me like that again. We were both looking for this great, epic love, and neither one of us could see what we had. So we were stupid. I was stupid. I gave up the best thing that ever happened to me."

The room was absolutely silent at Kelly's admission, and Brenda was actually fighting back tears, which probably seemed ridiculous to her friends, but Brenda knew that Brandon had felt the same way. Not at first, for six months or so, he'd gone back and forth about whether or not he'd made the right decision. But he also hadn't had a steady girlfriend for more than a month since Kelly. He hadn't been able to move on at all until he was on the other side of the country from her. And when he'd found out she was flirting with Dylan again, and then later when he'd found out she was engaged to Matt, Brenda knew it had hurt him a million times more than he'd let on.

More than that, Kelly's admission proved that the Kelly Taylor who'd been Brenda's best friend might still be in there. This Kelly, the Kelly who was constantly going after Dylan, it was like she represented the worst side of Kelly. The Kelly who'd loved and lost Brandon represented, in Brenda's eyes, the best side of Kelly.

"Donna, if you don't want to spend the rest of your life with David, if you don't want to grow old with him and have grandchildren with him, and wake up beside him every morning for the rest of your life, walk away," Kelly finally broke the silence. "But if you do want those things, then you need to hold on to dear life, because you'll regret it every day for the rest of your life if you don't. Trust me on that."

Donna closed her eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, and then stood up.

"I'm ready."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~


	13. Chapter 13

A/N: It's short, and more about David/Donna(/Val) than Brenda/Dylan, but I hope it's worth the wait! If this one isn't, then the next chapter should be, and I promise it won't be as long a wait on that one – possibly later today or tomorrow.

**Part Thirteen**

Dylan waited until he saw the priest impatiently check his watch and mutter something to the rabbi before he moved to go get David. He wanted to give his friend as much time as possible to sort his feelings out. He still didn't know whether or not David and Donna would be getting married that afternoon.

"How can I marry her when I can't stop thinking about you?" Dylan stopped dead in his tracks; the door to the groom's dressing room was slightly ajar, and he could hear his friend's every word. And Dylan had no idea whether to interrupt David and whoever was in there with him, or to walk away and pretend he hadn't heard.

The one thing Dylan was sure of was that he couldn't let Donna hear anything, because even if they didn't get married, she didn't deserve to find out David was with someone else on their wedding day, and she didn't deserve to find out about David's cold feet this way.

"Stop it David."

The female voice was instantly recognizable, seeing as she was once someone Dylan had spent a lot of time with. He never thought he'd see the day when David would consider leaving Donna for Valerie Malone.

"I mean it…"

"No, you don't," Val interrupted. Dylan once again considered fleeing the scene, but he couldn't bring himself to leave the door opened, for anyone to overhear, and he couldn't close it without letting them know he'd overheard. "You think you do, but David, you aren't in love with me."

It was clear from her voice that it cost Valerie to say those words, and Dylan realized that he hadn't really considered Valerie's feelings in this whole mess. Brenda hadn't mentioned anything, and Dylan had been so wrapped up in the problems with his own engagement, and with concern for David and Donna. He also hadn't ever really seen David and Valerie together.

"Yes, I am."

"If you were in love with me, you wouldn't have left me because I was too depressing for you," Val's voice held surprisingly little venom in it; she sounded tired, more than anything. "You drop everything when Donna has a bad day. You always have. You did it to me, and to everyone else you've ever dated. You might be having doubts about marrying Donna, but I'd bet a lot of money that you haven't even thought about me in months."

"I think about you," David murmured softly, but his voice sounded weak.

"You haven't missed me," Val countered. "I'm happy, and I have a new haircut, and I've been wearing dresses you've never seen before, and I danced with other men at your engagement party, and like every groom in the history of marriage, you're having doubts so you're pinning it on me and it isn't fair David. I can't even begin to explain to you how this isn't fair."

"Val…"

"You were the one person in the world that I trusted," anger seeped into Val's voice, although her volume didn't rise at all. "You were one of two people in the world who knew the truth about my father, and you broke up with me over it!"

"No I didn't."

"Maybe not officially, but David, you made me feel like I didn't deserve to have you, like I didn't deserve to be loved," Dylan actually heard Val give a small, hiccupping sob. "You made me feel dirty. It took me _two years_ to get past it, and now you want me to be the other woman. You want me to give you a reason to leave Donna because you're scared."

David didn't answer, and for a few seconds, Dylan wasn't sure whether or not he should make his presence known. Then David finally spoke.

"I never saw it that way."

"I know you didn't. You couldn't have known, and I stopped blaming you a long time ago. And I'm doing well now. I have this great loft apartment, right underneath Brenda's, and I'm managing a club that's about three times the size of the After Dark. I've been in some pretty intense counseling, with my mother, and we're doing okay. I see my little siblings a lot, which has really been great. And I'm not seeing anyone right now, but I have moved on. I'm okay, David."

"I'm glad," David answered, sincerely, as far as Dylan could tell. "I always wanted you to be happy."

"I know that. You had a big part in getting me to a place where I could be okay. But I was always a second choice for you, David. If you promised me for better or for worse, we'd both know you were lying," Val's voice seemed to be getting closer to the door and Dylan tensed, not wanting to seem like he was listening in (which he was, but only out of concern). "You've been keeping that promise to Donna for a decade. This is just the part where you make it official."

Suddenly Val was on the other side of the door, and when her eyes met Dylan's, he knew that she knew he'd overheard at least the end of the conversation. She didn't seem angry, so much as tired and hurt, and Dylan wished he could say something that would make this easier for her. He couldn't think of anything, and she didn't say a word, either, as she calmly passed him and made her way back into the chapel.

Dylan pushed the door open and entered the groom's dressing room to find David sitting on a couch, head in his hands, elbows on his knees. David didn't even look up as Dylan came in, so he cleared his throat with a forced cough.

"You interrupted me the other night," Dylan took the chair opposite his old friend. "I was about to tell you why I'm marrying Brenda."

"Yeah?" David looked up now.

"There hasn't been a moment in the last ten years when I haven't loved her, and I can't imagine that changing in the last hundred years," Dylan shrugged. "It's not that we don't still have problems, but even when I'm furious with her, my life is better for having her in it."

"Yeah," David repeated, though it was less of a question this time. "You are less of an ass when she's in town."

"Thanks."

They were quiet for a few moments, and David seemed to be seriously considering his options, something Dylan figured he should have done _before_ the wedding day, but to each his own. Not wanting to push, Dylan wasn't sure whether he should say more, afraid that David might reach a decision based on what he thought Dylan was advocating for, rather than basing his decision his own feelings. After a while, Steve knocked on the door, announcing that it was time to go. David stood up, making his way to the chapel.

"Don't ever tell Donna I doubted this," he whispered into Dylan's ear before they walked to their places at the altar.

Dylan nodded almost imperceptibly to Brenda as they passed her row, turning to look at her just in time to see her face burst into a beaming smile, and Dylan tried to memorize the look on her face. If he had cold feet on their wedding day (which seemed unlikely, after all they'd been through just trying to get to the wedding), he would just have to recall that smile, and they'd be okay.

He was sure of it.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~


	14. Chapter 14

A/N: Okay, so I know this chapter is MUCH later than promised, but it turned out to be quite the struggle to get it out. I reorganized it about ten times, and had originally planned to have all the action in this part and the next one in Part Fourteen, but ultimately decided against that. So after far too long, I give you the very last chapter in which we don't know where Brandon is (i.e, all will be revealed in the next part).

**Part Fourteen**

Even though the reception didn't technically extend onto the veranda of the hall, it was decorated with flowers that matched the wedding bouquets and white Christmas lights wrapped around the support beams. Even the floor of the veranda was covered with rose petals, and Brenda found herself marveling for the thousandth time that evening over how much attention Donna had paid to the smallest details of the day.

It had paid off, in spite of all of the drama leading up to the ceremony.

When Brenda had returned to her seat in the chapel, Val was absent, although she returned a few minutes later. The heartbroken expression on her friend's face was the first sign that David had decided to go through with the wedding. Years of experience told Brenda that Val wasn't ready to talk about it, wouldn't be ready for awhile, and it wasn't like they could have a heart to heart in the middle of Donna and David's wedding, anyway. So Brenda just wrapped an arm around her friend, holding her close throughout the ceremony.

It was probably the most beautiful wedding Brenda had ever attended, all things considered. The whole ceremony seemed like the culmination of the decade since the Walshes had moved to Beverly Hills, with the old gang all together to celebrate (minus Brandon, of course, an absence that certainly wasn't lost on Brenda). Seeing Steve and Kelly and Dylan standing in to support the happy couple, all fully grown adults, far cry from the teenagers they'd once been, set on their own life paths, it affected Brenda more than she'd expected it to.

None of them were where she'd imagined they would be, ten years ago. Steve, settled down with a wife and child and a steady career as a business man, the most stable member of their little circle, had absolutely blown her mind in the weeks since she'd returned. He was so considerate and warm, as if, in adulthood, he'd kept only the best of his personality traits. Kelly, too, was living the opposite of what Brenda had expected for her, so long ago, just starting out in public relations, engaged to a man far poorer than she was (although Brenda suspected the engagement wouldn't hold), living a life that wasn't exactly glamorous or fashionable, but she had surrounded herself with good friends, and she was doing work that interested her. Brenda had never really imagined who Kelly or Steve would be when they grew up, but they'd certainly both surprised her.

Donna and David, on the other hand, were exactly who she'd imagined they'd be. A few bumps in the road, and maybe they weren't as successful as she'd imagined they would be, but they were still very much Donna and David. In spite of her fierce loyalty to Val, she couldn't help but be glad that David had gone through with the wedding. As he recited his vows and kissed the bride, it was clear that David Silver loved his wife.

Brenda teared up more than once during the ceremony.

The reception, on the other hand, was not as magical. For one thing, Val had begged off, faking a headache. She'd sworn that she was fine, saying something along the lines of needing to see the wedding but not being ready to celebrate it just yet. The second disappointment came when she was seated at Table 3, while Dylan, Kelly, Steve and Janet sat with the bride and groom on the dais, and Andrea sat with the families at Table 2.

Brenda was stuck with former sorority sisters from CU and a few of David's coworkers, and Noah, all of whom had dates, while hers was yucking it up on the dais next to the woman he'd cheated on her with, the woman who'd sworn just last night to pursue him regardless of his relationship status. Had Val attended, she would also be at Table 3; instead, one of David's cousins had taken it upon himself to fil the empty seat. He'd recognized Brenda from one of her movies (something that had been happening more and more lately), and had flirted with her non-stop through dinner and dessert.

_Finally_ Dylan had escaped the bridal party and made his way over to her. But after a few dances, her grumpy mood had been hard to miss. He'd suggested a walk, and so there they were, standing alone on the veranda, staring out at the ocean.

"Brenda, I hate seeing you like this," Dylan wrapped his arms around her, pulling her in close and kissing her forehead. "Tell me what's wrong."

"I'm not sure I can even explain," she shook her head, more to clear it than to express anything. "There's just so much…"

"Is it me?" he asked, sounding simultaneously concerned and annoyed. "Brandon, your parents? What Bren? Because everything was fine a few days ago."

"All of the above," Brenda answered in a whisper, pulling away from him to turn around. She couldn't look into his eyes right now, couldn't see the desperate look she knew she would find. He'd want to know how he could fix this, and there was no way to explain to him that it wasn't something he had any control over.

It would be the same look that she had seen in London, the same look she'd seen years ago, after their first break up, the look that told her she was shutting him out, that once again, she wasn't trusting him enough to talk to him.

It was easy to blame Dylan for the problems they'd had; the drinking, Kelly, the drugs, he certainly wasn't faultless. But she wasn't either. Ever since they were sixteen, she'd been walling herself off from him, expecting the worst and protecting herself by shutting him out. She knew she was doing it, and she knew if she continued they wouldn't last the month, but after a decade, she didn't know how to change the pattern.

"Why has it always been so hard for us, Dylan?" she finally asked quietly. "The cancer scare, the pregnancy scare, my parents, your parents, Kelly, Val, everything has always been an uphill battle. Since day one. And Donna and David…"

"Have had it just as hard," Dylan interrupted, pulling her back against him and nestling his head in the crook of her shoulder. It was a familiar pose for them, and it felt natural. "Brenda, I don't know what your Dad's problem with me is, and I don't know why Brandon hasn't called, but I've been thinking about what you said this morning, and I know what's different between last time and now."

"What's that?"

"I'm not giving up," he answered, and she turned to look at him, one hand reaching up to stroke his cheek. "Bren, you can't scare me off this time. If this is going to work, and I believe it will, we need to be better about letting each other know when there are problems."

"Kelly said some things last night," Brenda admitted slowly. Might as well get the hardest stuff over with first. "About how she's not ready to give you up, and I guess it got to me, seeing you with her today."

"Is that it?" he chuckled a little, although not unkindly. "Brenda you have _nothing_ to worry about. Don't you know that by now?"

"A few weeks ago, you were trying to coax her away from her fiancé," she reminded him, hating the shrill note in her voice. It reminded her of Kelly circa 1994, and give how that had turned out…

"I was trying to get Kelly to leave Matt because he's a cheater and a jerk," Dylan explained, and Brenda was impressed to hear only a minimal amount of frustration in his voice. "And I do still care about her, I always will. But, these last few years, I was just lonely, and missing you, and I guess I thought that if you and I couldn't work it out, there must have been a reason, and if she and Brandon couldn't work it out either, than maybe she and I were supposed to be together… destined, or something. Clearly, I was an idiot."

"Clearly," Brenda nodded, smirking a little, before she sighed. "It's just… it's only been a few weeks and already there have been these enormous obstacles for us. And I _miss_ Brandon. I've _never_ gone this long without talking to him, not in twenty six years!"

"Oh Brenda," Dylan ran his hands along her back gently. Her green satin halter gown had a scooping neckline in back, leaving her skin bared almost to the curve of her rear, and his fingers trailed goose bumps up and down her spine. "Sweetie, it'll all be okay."

"And I felt like a stranger in there," she admitted, sagging against his chest and letting his fingers have their way with her back. "Table 3? Donna and David and Kelly and Steve are some of my oldest friends, and I still love them all, and I know that they're your family. They're what keeps pulling you back to L.A., but I don't feel the same connection to them anymore. Andrea flies back to New York tomorrow, and Val leaves next week, and I'm going to be out here, alone."

"You're not alone."

"I don't have any close friends in L.A. anymore," she responded. "Andrea is getting divorced, and Val's dealing with all of this, and I won't be there."

"Things are awkward with everyone right now, but they'll get better, and we'll be in New York half the year most years, all year some years," Dylan promised, rocking her slightly. "And even if you can't physically be with Val and Andrea, you'll only be a phone call away. And letters, you love to write letters."

"I do," Brenda sniffled. "I like letters. And I love you."

"I love you too," Dylan smiled, and then suddenly he was kissing her, and his hands were everywhere, running across her back, up her thighs, clutching the satin material of her gown. Her right foot slipped up his leg, the heels of her stiletto dragging along his pants leg. One of her hands tangled in the hair at the nape of his neck. It always astounded her how things with Dylan could go from zero to sixty in a nanosecond.

"What are we doing?" Brenda asked breathlessly, pulling back reluctantly when she felt one of his hands dip under her dress.

"I missed you in there," he answered, a mischievous twinkle in his eye, "and you clearly need a distraction. And maybe Kelly will see us and get the message."

Brenda smirked and reached for him, kissing him passionately. Nothing was settled, her fears weren't assuaged, but they were placed on the back burner for awhile, and they flew out of her head altogether when she felt his lips on her neck and a moan escaped her throat. Some things, at least, would never change; the two of them would be in their eighties, still necking like teenagers in inappropriate and incredibly public places, and wouldn't that be a sight for the grandkids.

"Brenda?"

It wasn't Dylan's voice, it was tentative and female, and Brenda jumped back against the porch railing, away from her fiancé's groping hands. Andrea was standing in front of them, at the door to the reception, an amused but worried look on her face. She was holding Brenda's cell phone.

"My lipstick was in your purse, and I needed a touch up," she explained hesitantly, "and I saw this, and… Brenda you missed six calls."

Six calls?

Her heart leapt into her throat and then dropped to her stomach in less than a second, and she was certain of two things.

They'd found Brandon, and something was horribly, horribly wrong.


	15. Chapter 15

A/N: I had another aaaaahhhh where do I go from here moment with this chapter, which lead to much writing, re-writing, re-plotting, writing and re-writing again. Add in some intense classes and a fairly serious illness and you get very sparse updates from me, but hopefully all three of my stories will be getting some attention in the next few days. Anyway, since you're all dying to know what happened to Brandon, I'll just go right into this without anymore fanfare.

I hope no one hates me too much. *nervously rubs hands together*

**Part Fifteen**

Dylan took a deep breath and rubbed his face with his hands before setting the phone down and making his way into the living area of the hotel suite. Both Brenda and Val snapped their heads in his direction as he entered the room, and he cursed inwardly. No matter how they worked this, someone was going to be disappointed.

"There were only two seats on the next flight," he announced. "The one after that is completely booked."

"So what…?" Brenda sounded so fragile, so helpless, and Dylan couldn't remember the last time she'd sounded that way. He found himself wishing they could go back, even just a few hours, standing outside Donna and David's wedding. Then she'd been hurt, but not like this.

Nothing had prepared any of them for this.

"I booked the two seats," he answered. "I think you two should go."

"Dylan, I wouldn't feel right about…" Val shook her head. "You should go."

"The last thing your parents need is to have me around, right now Brenda," Dylan shook off Val's interruption, moving to sit on the coffee table, so he was face to face with his fiancée, taking her hands in his own. "You should be focusing on your family, and I'll handle things here. If you decide that you need me there later, I'm just a phone call away."

"I don't know," Brenda whispered, letting Dylan pull her into his arms. She buried her face in his chest, and he felt tear tracks burn through the white shirt he still wore. He'd taken off the jacket of his tuxedo, which was now wrapped around her shoulders, but other than that they hadn't even changed clothes yet.

"I really don't mind staying behind," Valerie announced again.

"You're family," Brenda shook her head. "Brandon would want you there."

"So it's settled," Dylan rubbed Brenda's back through his jacket, hoping she would find it soothing. "You and Val will go to the hospital to be with him, and I'll take care of everything here. You just focus on being with Brandon."

"What if something happens?"

"Brandon will be fine."

There was no way for Dylan to know that, of course. No way for any of them to know that yet, but what else could he possibly have said to Brenda?

"I'll fly out in a few days, and join you, anyway," he promised. "It'll be okay."

A phone rang in the distance, and Brenda leapt up from the sofa to answer it. Her parents had been checking in every half hour ever since they'd returned to the hotel room, after running out of the wedding reception. It seemed unreal that this was only their fourth call, that it had only been two hours since everything had been turned so completely upside down.

"_**Brenda you missed six calls."**_

The first of the six messages had been from the Tony Awards Committee asking Brenda to fill in for a presenter, and the third had been from her agent, relaying the same message, but all four of the other messages had been about Brandon – one from his editor, one from a woman claiming to be his girlfriend, one from Jim and one from Cindy.

His office building in Chechnya had exploded two weeks earlier and it had taken almost the full two weeks to find him. They hadn't been able to identify him right away, except as an American, so he was flown to the military hospital in Germany before anyone realized he was Brandon Walsh with the NY Chronicle. He was still in Germany now, and Mr. and Mrs. Walsh had flown to see him as soon as they'd heard.

From what Brenda had reported back each time her parents had called, he'd had several surgeries and between his injuries and his painkillers he was still unconscious. There was definitely a spinal cord injury, and there was concern about internal bleeding and possible brain damage, but they wouldn't know too much more until he woke up enough to communicate with the doctors. In the meantime, they were doing a series of minor surgeries to repair what they could.

"No change," Brenda announced when she returned to the living room. "He's still… there isn't any change."

"He's Brandon," Valerie whispered, as if that said everything, and Dylan turned to look at her. For the second time that day, he'd discovered a piece of her that he'd never known, and each time it had forced him to look more closely at a piece of him that he didn't particularly like. He'd known that Valerie was living with the Walshes, he'd known that she was friends with them, but he'd never really known that she _cared_ about them. There was a lone tear track on her face – unlike him and Brenda she'd had a chance to change out of her wedding attire, but she hadn't yet removed her makeup, and the mascara leaked a trail down the side of her cheek – and she seemed almost as shaken up as Brenda was.

He'd always thought 'like family' was just an expression people used, especially the Walshes. They couldn't actually view all of their children's friends as family, and the fact that almost none of 'the gang' had any contact with the family anymore, outside of whoever they happened to be friends with, seemed to prove his point. Even Kelly had fallen out of favor with the Walshes after she hadn't married Brandon. Valerie never seemed to, and Dylan had always wondered about it.

Now, he was seeing that deep down, she cared for the Walsh family as much as they cared for her.

How could he possibly have spent so much time with her and known so little about her?

"Your flight leaves in a few hours," Dylan announced, standing up to give Brenda a quick hug and a kiss on the forehead. "Do you want me to help you pack?"

Six hours later, having seen Brenda successfully off at the airport, and explained to Andrea why neither Brenda nor Val would be seeing _her_ off later that afternoon when she, Hannah and Jesse all flew back to New York (on what was bound to be one of the most awkward flights ever), Dylan finally collapsed onto the bed he'd already gotten so used to sharing with his fiancée. He'd been awake for just over twenty four hours, and in that time, David had almost called off his wedding, then gone through with it, and then there'd been the tense conversation on the veranda, and then the hours after they found out about Brandon had been utter Hell.

As his head hit the pillow, Dylan made a mental checklist of the things he would have to do when he woke – call Brenda's agent and get her out of her commitments for at least a month, including this film and the Tony Awards, call Steve and David and Kelly and explain what was going on with Brandon, call his mother and finally tell her that Brenda had agreed to marry him, and then tell her about Brandon, and he should probably tell Nat, and then he should start packing up his and Brenda's belongings and moving them to the apartment she'd rented weeks ago, because it didn't make sense to pay rent and pay for two hotel rooms (she hadn't wanted to kick Val out, so she'd kept paying for that room).

Tomorrow was going to be another very long day.


	16. Chapter 16

A/N: Sorry for the long wait! I hope no one went too crazy wanting to learn Brandon's fate, and I hope this chapter eases anyone's fears! I'm not sure how much longer this story is going to last – I have things I want to accomplish, but I don't want this one to go on too much longer either. For those of you wondering about Kelly, well… all I can say now is look out for the next chapter.

**Part Sixteen**

After an eleven hour flight from LA to Berlin and a four hour train ride from Berlin to Frankfurt and the longest cab ride of her life from the station in Frankfurt to the hospital, all that Brenda wanted was to see her brother, but by then it was just barely dawn in Landstuhl, and the hospital attendants had looked at her like she was crazy when she told them she was there to see her brother. Technically visiting hours didn't really apply to family, but she was still told to come back in the morning. In defeat, she and Val had gotten in another cab and taken another ridiculously long ride to the economy hotel where her parents were staying, hoping they'd have another room open.

They were in luck – there was one room with two twin beds available, and Brenda handed over her credit card without thinking twice. It would be better than finding anywhere else, she reasoned. It was close to the hospital, and if they really hated it the could leave in the morning.

"I'm going to call Dylan," she announced when she and Val got into the room. Val had made a bee line to the bed nearest the window. Snores were the only response from her friend, who must have fallen asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. Brenda was almost jealous of Valerie; as she took her cell phone into the en suite bathroom, Brenda thought she would be incapable of sleeping, at least until she saw her brother.

The phone rang only once before Dylan's voice flooded the line.

"I've been waiting to hear from you."

There was so much worry in his voice that Brenda instantly felt guilty for not calling as soon as the flight had landed. She'd been so wrapped up in getting to Brandon it had slipped her mind, and she told him so.

"Have you seen him?"

"Not yet," she answered with a sigh, looking out the bathroom's window. The sun was just starting to rise; it was still night in Beverly Hills. Andrea would be arriving in New York right around now, give or take an hour, and Donna and David would be well on their way to whatever island was serving as their honeymoon destination. Brenda had forgotten to ask. "We're at the hotel. I think I left the information; my parents are staying here somewhere too."

"Speaking of hotels," Dylan said suddenly, "I checked out of ours this morning."

"What?" Brenda blinked. She had a vague thought that she'd known he was going to do that, but the last two days were such a blur that she wasn't really sure. "Where are you?"

"I'm in the place you rented," he answered. "I'm even unpacking."

"God help us," Brenda whispered.

"I heard that."

They chatted for a few more minutes before exhaustion overcame Brenda and she realized it might make sense to take a nap before she went back to the hospital. A check in the mirror told her she was pale and blood shot, a combination of no sleep and too much caffeine had taken their toll on her.

"Dylan?" she began hesitantly before she hung up, "do you think you'll be seeing Kelly before I get back?"

"Depends on when you get back."

"Dylan…"

"What are you asking me Brenda?" he groaned, in a tone that she recognized from the days when _she_ had been the other woman, and Kelly had been the jealous and overbearing girlfriend. "Do you want me not to see her? Because I thought we talked about this…"

"We did," Brenda ran a hand over face, and regretted opening her mouth. "It's just that you're there, and she's there, and I'm in Europe and… Dylan, you have to understand…"

"Brenda, you have nothing to worry about," he interrupted, his voice softer. "I love _you_. And in a few days, if you aren't already on your way home by then, I'll come and join you, okay? Nothing's going to happen. I promise."

Brenda tried to remember whether he'd ever explicitly promised her fidelity before, and then she decided to stop torturing herself. She had more serious things to worry about, and anyway, just because Kelly didn't seem to be above stealing her boyfriend now any more than she had been at seventeen, it didn't mean that Dylan was willing to be stolen this time. And at his worst, he wouldn't have cheated on her while her brother was in the hospital in who knew what condition.

"Okay."

They'd said their goodbyes, and she'd staggered back into the hotel room, collapsing on the bed next to Val's and catching a few precious hours of sleep before she felt herself being shaken awake.

"Brenda, it's your mother," Val's early morning voice was in Brenda's ear. "Bren, answer the phone."

"'Lo?" Brenda groaned into the cell phone that Valerie had shoved against her ear. Cindy had called to say that she and Jim were heading over to the hospital, and Brenda bolted out of bed with sudden energy as she and Val rushed to meet them in the hallway.

Half an hour later, she stood before the door to her brother's hospital room, her hands shaking. The doctors had said he woke up over night, that there didn't seem to be any brain damage, but Brenda was still terrified to see what condition he might be in. If Valerie hadn't pushed the door open for her, Brenda wasn't sure she would ever have opened it.

"So what was that earth shattering news I was supposed to call you about?" Brandon's voice reached her ears before Brenda even allowed herself to open her eyes and look at him. "Because as far as earth shattering goes, I think I win."

"Brandon!" Brenda felt the tears running down her face as she threw herself into her brother's arms, taking care to avoid his injuries, which mostly seemed to be to his legs and torso, anyway, although his face was fairly scratched up.

"Your news wouldn't have anything to do with Dylan asking me how to get ahold of Grandma Walsh's ring, would it?" Brandon asked after a long hug. He clearly didn't want to talk about himself, and Brenda decided to let him avoid the subject for awhile if he wanted to.

"It does," Brenda answered, holding up her left hand and wiggling her ring finger. She'd put the ring on before she left Beverly Hills, and for the first time, it had stayed on her hand for a whole day.

"I'm happy for you," Brandon smiled. "I hope he deserves you."

Brenda moved to sit beside his bed as the rest of their family filed into the room and started fussing over him. She was still worried – he didn't seem to be able to move his lower half, and the scars would be around for quite awhile, and the doctor mentioned that there was one last surgery he needed – but inside, she was glowing.

Brandon knew about her engagement.

It was finally real.


	17. Chapter 17

A/N: What's this? Another update, so soon? Well yes, yes it is. I must have been bitten by some kind of inspiration bug. Anyway, here's the big Kelly chapter.

**Part Seventeen**

Dylan was a bit startled to hear the knock on the door. He'd called his mother and let her know that he was living somewhere else, and it would be just like Iris to show up without calling, but she tended to save her mysterious appearances for special occasions, and seeing as she didn't know about Brandon or the engagement yet, and seeing as she'd left only a few weeks ago, it didn't seem likely that it was her at the door. He'd also told Noah and Nat, for business reasons, and of course Brenda knew the address, since she'd been the one to rent the apartment in the first place, but it didn't seem likely that it was any of them either.

With a sigh, one hand rubbing absently at his neck, Dylan pulled the door open, and tried to stop his jaw from hitting the floor.

"_Kelly said some things last night, about how she's not ready to give you up…"_

"_It's just that you're there, and she's there, and I'm in Europe and… Dylan, you have to understand…"_

Why hadn't he taken Brenda a little more seriously?

Of course, even if he had, he wouldn't have expected Kelly to show up on the doorstep of an apartment she wasn't even supposed to know about, dressed in a revealing little black dress and holding a bottle of expensive champagne.

"Noah told me you finally got a place of your own," she greeted him with a seductive smile. "I thought we could celebrate."

Just that morning, he'd woken to a phone call from Brenda. _"Brandon's okay!"_ she'd cried happily. _"He knows. We can start planning the wedding!"_ Her voice had gone up at the end, not in a questioning way, but from sheer excitement, and Dylan held felt a grin spread across his face. Brenda had gone on to explain that her brother was scarred and bruised pretty badly, he had a few burns from the explosion, and he would probably be in a wheelchair for a very, very long time, but he was alive, and he was happy for them. Dylan felt like he'd let out a breath he'd been holding for weeks, knowing that everything could end for them if Brandon didn't approve.

Dylan had actually thought that now that Brandon knew, the hurdles would be gone. After all, the Walshes had (grudgingly) accepted his position in their daughter's life, and his mother and sister weren't likely to raise any objections. He knew Brenda had been nervous about their friends, but Dylan figured they'd come around eventually. They always did.

He hadn't factored in Kelly.

"Kel, I don't think this is a good idea," he stammered as Kelly made her way into the apartment. Brenda had been buying furniture as she came upon pieces that she liked, so the living room had a sofa and a few bookcases, but it was otherwise bare. Kelly scanned the room, and turned to him with a look he couldn't read.

"You know I didn't figure you for green velvet," she said, sinking into the plush couch. It was exactly the dramatic type of piece that Brenda loved, but Kelly was right, it wasn't his style.

"Brenda picked it out," he told her, remaining standing, arms crossed against his chest.

"Mmm."

"Kelly, I really don't think you should be here," Dylan tried to tell her again. "I don't think Matt or Brenda would like it."

"Matt and I broke up," Kelly replied, rubbing a hand along the back of the sofa. "And being with Brenda has never stopped you before."

"Kelly," he didn't say anything else, but there was a warning in his voice.

"Dylan, we're friends," she answered, a hand twisting through her hair. "I just want to celebrate your new place with you. And if Brenda's so important to you, where is she?"

"Germany," he said. "She had a family emergency."

"She's in Europe?" Kelly smirked, and Dylan knew she was thinking about what had happened between them when Brenda was in Paris. He also knew that Brenda would be thinking about that time.

Dylan was determined not to hurt Brenda like that ever again. He knew in his heart that if he and Brenda didn't make it to the aisle this time around, if he gave her any reason to doubt their commitment, it would all be over for real. He was on relationship probation, in a way. He couldn't let that happen.

"You can't tell me you haven't thought about us," Kelly stood and moved across the room until she was standing before him, her heels making them almost equally tall. "I know you're with her, now, but you wanted to be with me for years. That can't have just gone away."

"It did," Dylan stepped away from her, running a hand through his hair. "Kelly, I won't hurt her again."

Kelly's eyes darkened, and for a moment, Dylan thought she was thinking about the friendship she'd once shared with Brenda, thought maybe she was reconsidering her willingness to overlook his relationship, but then the darkness cleared, and an angry look set in.

"So what was all of this?" she demanded. "You cheat on Gina, you spend years trying to break up me and Matt, and now when I leave him for you…"

"You didn't leave Matt for me, Kel," Dylan interrupted. "Come on."

"Is that so hard to believe?"

"Kelly, I didn't know what I wanted before," Dylan said gently, sitting on the sofa. Now it was Kelly left standing, her hands on her hips, a scowl on her face. "I do now. And in a way, I owe that to you."

"So I'm the reason you're rejecting me?"

"Sort of," Dylan shrugged. He was trying to choose his words carefully. He wasn't in love with Kelly any more, but he did love her, and he did think of her as one of his closest friends. She'd had a difficult time of it the last few years, from getting shot to Brandon cheating to the not wedding to her grandfather's death to Matt's wife to the rape to shooting her attacker to getting tried for murder to Matt cheating and now the end of that relationship. Dylan knew he hadn't been fair to her since his return to L.A. In many ways, he'd considered her his back up plan, and he'd just assumed she'd be available for him. He felt guilty about it now, and the last thing he wanted was to add to her pain.

At the same time, he had to make it clear to Kelly that he was in love with Brenda, and that he wouldn't do anything to jeopardize his relationship.

"Do you remember when you proposed to me, Kel?" he asked quietly. She winced a little at the memory, the angry scowl still fixed on her face. "I couldn't commit to you then, because I knew I was still in love with Brenda. It wouldn't have been fair to either of you, then, and anything we did now wouldn't be fair either."

Kelly still didn't say anything, but the scowl was a little softer. Dylan hoped she was coming around, and decided to press on.

"Kelly, when we talked three weeks ago, you said we weren't really in love," he reminded her gently. Their conversation hadn't been long, but he'd thought it had closed the door on their relationship forever. He'd thought they agreed that the romance between them was over, that it should never have begun in the first place. Kelly had even said as much to Brenda, and that conversation had played a significant part in Brenda's decision to say yes, Dylan remembered.

"I was with Matt then."

"When I first moved back to Beverly Hills, you chose Matt," he tried a different tactic, reminding Kelly of those last few months of 1998. "You two weren't even really a couple yet, and you chose to be with him instead of being with me. You wouldn't have done that if you loved me."

Kelly didn't say anything, but she rested her head in her hands, her elbows resting on her knees. After a few moments, Dylan heard sniffles. He laid a hand on her shoulder, careful to keep it in platonic, friendly territory, and the sniffles grew louder. When she turned to face him, there were tear tracks on her cheeks. She looked heartbroken, and Dylan knew it wasn't entirely about him.

"What is wrong with me, Dylan?" she asked pitifully. "What kind of person breaks two engagements in three years? What kind of person goes after her best friend's boyfriend, twice? Why do I keep ending up alone?"

"Kelly, maybe you _need_ to be alone for a little while," he answered. God knew she had a lot to process and deep down, Dylan didn't think she really knew what she wanted. Her friends were settling down around her, but Kelly clearly wasn't ready for that kind of commitment yet. And after all, they were all still very, very young. "Maybe it would help you clear your head."

Kelly didn't answer, and the tears kept falling. Dylan pulled her into a hug, and held her for almost half an hour while she cried. When she finally pulled away, prepared to leave, she seemed only a little better.

"We can still be friends, right?"

"Absolutely," Dylan smiled as he gave her one last hug goodbye. "And maybe some day you and Brenda can be friends again, too."

Kelly didn't respond to that, but she did smile, and Dylan hoped that she was taking his words into consideration. When she left, Dylan closed the door and leaned back against it, his eyes falling shut.

_Please, God, let that be the end of all of this drama._


	18. Chapter 18

A/N: Huge thanks and apologies to any loyal readers who have been anxiously awaiting a new update from me. I _have_ been writing - I have two parts of She Falls Apart done, another part for this in the works, and a completely new story in the works - but I have not been typing up what I've written, or editing it. So I deeply and humbly apologize. I promise I will try my best not to leave more than a month between updates in the future!

**Part Eighteen**

It had been six weeks since she'd first arrived in Germany, six weeks since Brandon had first opened his eyes after the bombing. To Brenda, it seemed like a lot longer, and a lot less time, too.

"You really don't need to stay here," Brandon said for the seventh time. "I'm better, really."

"I'm not leaving you here alone," Brenda answered for the seventh time. Val had long since returned to New York, and Dylan had come and stayed almost four weeks before he, too, had had to return to the states. Brenda and the senior Walshes were the only ones left in Germany at Brandon's bedside, and Jim and Cindy had taken a few days to travel around the country before Brandon was released, hopefully at the end of the week.

"Bren, honestly..."

"Forget it."

Throughout their exchange Brenda had hardly looked up from the bridal magazine she was flipping through; it was in German, but pretty pictures were the same in every language.

"Fine," Brandon reached out and pushed the pages of the magazine down away from her face. "Tell me about the wedding."

"We haven't set a date; I don't have a dress; there isn't a location or even a general, thousand mile radius for a location; don't get me started on flowers, music, food and photography; oh, yeah, and I'm not even sure the groom has told his mother yet," she answered in one breath. Since she'd agreed to start planning the wedding, she'd been overwhelmed by the minutiae of the details, and she and Dylan had had their worst fight in months over the location when she'd suggested a manor in England where a friend of hers had been married a few months ago. Dylan had insisted on somewhere closer to "home," wherever that was. He, of course, meant California.

"I remember those days," Brandon shook his head with a smile, and Brenda blinked in surprise.

Brandon never, ever referred to the almost wedding with Kelly. Never.

He must have caught her look, because he quickly said "it was a long time ago, Bren. I can mention it every once in awhile, can't I?"

"Of course!" Brenda sputtered, still surprised. "It's just that you never have talked about it. I was surprised, is all."

"There was never much to say," Brandon looked away from her. "It would have been a mistake for us to get married then. Calling it off was the right thing. I only wish..."

He cut off, and Brenda knew she probably should just let it go. It was more than he'd said to her about the wedding since... well, ever. But Brenda couldn't help feeling curious.

"You wish?"

"We said we'd stay friends," he said quietly. "I wish we had. I miss her sometimes."

"Oh," Brenda wanted to tell him all of the things that Kelly had told Donna on her wedding day, wanted to tell him that Kelly missed him too, but she knew that would be a violation of trust.

"I know she's not your favorite person..."

"No, I understand," Brenda cut her brother off. "I miss her too."

That, after all, was maybe the worst part of the latest Brenda-Dylan-Kelly triangle drama. Time and distance had nearly erased her anger at Kelly, but it had left the good memories in tact. She'd been genuinely excited when she'd thought her brother would marry her oldest friend, and genuinely sad when it hadn't happened. Brenda had always imagined that when and if she returned to Beverly Hills, they would be able to rekindle their friendship. Instead, she'd felt like she was losing Kelly all over again.

But that was a subject for another time.

"Enough about the past," Brenda forced a smile and took her brother's hand with a gentle squeeze. "Tell me about your girlfriend."

"Do you see a girlfriend?" Brandon responded bitterly, waving at the room (empty except for the two of them) for emphasis. Brenda frowned.

The woman on the other end of the phone line had sounded so genuinely concerned for Brandon. She hadn't _sounded_ like the type of woman who would cut and run when her boyfriend got seriously hurt.

"I thought..." Brenda paused, choosing her words carefully. Her brother had always been prickly about acknowledging his own pains and problems. She knew she needed to say the right thing if she wanted him to confide in her. "It sounded serious when I talked to her on the phone."

"It wasn't," Brandon's frown deepened. "She met someone else while I was gone. When I called to tell her I was okay, she came clean."

"Oh Brandon."

"We weren't together very long," he shrugged, and Brenda could see that he wanted to change the subject.

It just broke her heart to see her brother struggling right when she felt like her career and her personal life were both at high points. In addition to his physical injuries, Brandon was going to have to rethink his career. He needed months of physical therapy, and he might never be fit enough to do the kind of reporting he'd grown to love. He'd been absolutely thriving at the Chronicle, and that might very well be gone for good now. And to top it all off, his girlfriend had more or less abandoned him. It was starting to seem like only one of the twins could be happy at any given time.

"I'll be okay," Brandon must have read her thoughts. "I promise."

"Have you thought about where you'll go when they let you out of her?" she changed the subject, trying hard to keep the tears out of her eyes. If he saw how worried she really was, he would feel like he had to comfort her, and that was the last thing she wanted.

"There's no point in going back to Washington," he answered, and Brenda could hear the bitterness that she knew he was trying to repress. "Mom and Dad seem to think I'm going to Hong Kong with them, but... I can't imagine living with them again as an adult, you know? And it's not like Hong Kong is home."

"What about L.A.?"

"Bren..."

"You could stay with Dylan and me if you wanted, or I'm sure Steve and Janet would love to have you," Brenda pretended she hadn't heard the warning in his voice. "The doctor mentioned a physical therapy place near Beverly Hills, didn't he? He said it was one of the best out there."

"I don't know."

"Brandon, Dylan and I would love to have you," she reiterated. In truth, she hadn't even discussed the possibility with her fiance, but she knew Dylan wouldn't openly object. She also knew that California was home for Brandon, much more than it had ever been for her. "You could see the gang, and Nat will probably let you eat free for life once he sees the wheelchair. And I'm sure Steve and Janet have room for you at their new magazine if you want a job."

"I'll think about it, okay?"

That was when Brenda knew she had him; he was scheduled to be released in a week. He didn't have time to find anywhere else to go, and he had to know as well as she did that California would be the best place for him.

Sure enough, nine days later, Brandon was at her side on a flight bound for L.A.X...

... but then, so were her parents.


	19. Chapter 19

A/N: For anyone who might be eagerly awaiting an update for She Falls Apart, I promise that there is something in the works; it just needs a bit of an overhaul. In the meantime, enjoy this:

**Part Nineteen**

_"Tomorrow. I'm booking a flight now. We'll be home tomorrow, Dylan."_

There were almost no words to accurately describe his feelings, hearing those words filter across the phone line. It had been six long weeks since Donna and David's wedding, six weeks since Brenda had literally flown off to be at Brandon's bedside, and even though he'd spent two of those weeks in Germany with them, Dylan had missed her terribly. Since her re-entry into his life, Brenda had once again consumed him. She was so much a part of every part of his life that her absence, even a brief one, even after only a comparatively short time together, had unnerved him.

Of course, there was also the ever present fear that Jim would actually manage to talk her out of marrying him, given enough time. But in the end, she'd sounded as happy to be coming home as he was to have her come home.

There had been just enough work to keep him busy until it was time to meet her at the airport - he'd had to rush order a bedroom set for the guest room and make sure both the guest bedroom and the guest bathroom were properly laid out for Brandon's wheelchair, and he'd had to rent a handicap accessible van, among other things.

Still, the twenty minute wait at the airport had seemed interminable, until _finally_ he saw her, pushing a wheelchair bound Brandon through the gate. She spotted him at the same time, and there was no mistaking the way her face lit up.

She'd gone away and come back, and they were still as strong as they'd been when she left. It was a first for them.

"Hey you," she half spoke, half whispered when she was close enough to be heard, stopping the wheelchair and moving to stand face to face with Dylan. "I missed you."

"I missed you more."

He went in for a kiss, and their lips met for the first time since his own flight had left Germany. Her arms went around his neck and his around her waist, his knees bending to lift her off the ground.

"I think that's more than enough, don't you?"

"Oh Jim," Dylan looked up in time to see his future mother-in-law roll her eyes at his future father-in-law. He gave Brenda his best 'what-the-hell' look.

She had_ not_ mentioned that Jim and Cindy would be joining them.

"My parents wanted to see Brandon get settled," she explained, looking somewhat sheepish. "They're staying in a hotel and they're leaving on Sunday."

'Sorry,' she added in a lip synch.

Brandon smirked.

"Well, should we go?" Cindy asked with as much cheerful enthusiasm as she could muster. "I can't wait to see this apartment of yours."

Dylan suddenly realized that Brenda herself hadn't even been inside the apartment since he'd started moving their stuff in. He'd kept the furniture and "decor" (whatever that meant) to a bare minimum in the meantime, waiting for her to approve the decorating process, or better yet, take over. And now her mother, the queen of domesticity, was coming over.

Almost as if she could hear his thoughts, Brenda took his hand and gave it a squeeze, mouthing 'sorry' once more.

They all trudged over to baggage claim, picked up all their combined luggage (most of it, DYlan couldn't help but notice, belonged to Brenda); Jim and Cindy picked up their rental car, and within a little more than an hour, they were all back at the apartment.

It was one of the most awkward evenings of his life. Jim and Cindy helped Brandon unpack and settle into the guestroom, offering him a room at their place in Hong Kong at least five more times while they did so. Then they'd stayed for lunch, then dinner. It wasn't that he didn't like Brenda's parents, but the whole evening, Brandon's injuries and Brenda's engagement were the two very large elephants in the room. All five of them steered determinedly clear of any topic that might hint at either. It felt like a very long time indeed before he heard Brenda say she would walk her parents out. A flurry of goodbyes ensued, and then Dylan was alone with Brandon for the first time in nearly five years.

"So..."

"So," Brandon agreed, and they fell silent once more. After a few moments, Brandon broke the silence. "Listen, man, you and Brenda... I'm not against it. It seems a little sudden, but she's happy. As long as she stays that way, I don't have a problem. And my parents will get over it. Eventually."

"Thanks."

It would never come up between them again, and even though Dylan could think of a million reasons why Brandon should be more concerned for his sister's sake, why he should put up more of a fight about the whole thing, Dylan was grateful for the quiet acceptance. It meant that one day, Dylan might be able to call Brandon his best friend again.


End file.
